Last Week In Congress: How Cascadia’s U.S. lawmakers voted (July 29th-August 2nd)

Good morn­ing! Here’s how Cas­ca­di­a’s Unit­ed States Sen­a­tors vot­ed on major issues dur­ing the leg­isla­tive week end­ing Fri­day, August 2nd, 2019.

The House was in recess.

In the United States Senate

APPROVING TWO-YEAR BUDGET DEAL: Vot­ing 67 for and 28 against, the Sen­ate on August 1st approved a two-year bud­get deal (H.R. 3877) that would allow Pen­ta­gon and non-mil­i­tary spend­ing to increase by $320 bil­lion over cur­rent lev­els while sus­pend­ing the statu­to­ry bor­row­ing lim­it until July 31, 2021, to pre­vent default on the $22 tril­lion nation­al debt.

The bill address­es the near­ly 30 per­cent of the $4.6 tril­lion fed­er­al bud­get com­prised of dis­cre­tionary spend­ing, leav­ing untouched the approx­i­mate­ly 70 per­cent allo­cat­ed to manda­to­ry pro­grams includ­ing Medicare, Social Secu­ri­ty and vet­er­ans ben­e­fits and rul­ing out tax increas­es as a means of curb­ing fed­er­al debt. The bill caps dis­cre­tionary spend­ing at $1.375 tril­lion for each of fis­cal 2020 and 2021 while antic­i­pat­ing annu­al deficits approach­ing $1 tril­lion and inter­est pay­ments on the nation­al debt like­ly to top $400 bil­lion annually.

Top Sen­ate Repub­li­can Mitch McConnell, R‑Kentucky, described the agree­ment (already vot­ed on by the House) as “the right deal for our nation­al defense. It is the right deal because it ensures the Unit­ed States main­tains its full faith and cred­it. It is the right deal because it brings pre­dictabil­i­ty and sta­bil­i­ty through 2020 and moves toward restor­ing reg­u­lar appropriations.”

Demo­c­ra­t­ic Leader Chuck Schumer, D‑New York, said the bill pro­vides “addi­tion­al resources for the states to com­bat the opi­oid epi­dem­ic; sup­port for VA hos­pi­tals car­ing for our vet­er­ans; can­cer research and oth­er crit­i­cal med­ical research; cli­mate and clean ener­gy tech­nol­o­gy; reduc­ing the bur­den of col­lege debt; infra­struc­ture and trans­porta­tion improvements.”

Oppo­nent Rand Paul, R‑Kentucky, said the nation­al debt “now stands at $22 tril­lion. This year, we will add over $1.2 tril­lion. We are approach­ing record deficits, and nei­ther par­ty cares.”

He added: “Inter­est on this debt will be over $400 bil­lion next year, pre­cise­ly, $455 bil­lion. Inter­est will sur­pass all wel­fare spend­ing in the next two years. Inter­est on the debt will sur­pass defense spend­ing by 2025.”

Rand Paul has tak­en flak for these com­ments, giv­en that he vot­ed for the Repub­li­can tax cut plan in 2017 that sig­nif­i­cant­ly increased the nation­al debt.

A yes vote was to send the bill to Don­ald Trump.

Cas­ca­dia total: 5 aye votes, 1 nay vote

BLOCKING INCREASE IN NATIONAL DEBT LIMIT: Vot­ing 23 for and 70 against, the Sen­ate on August 1st defeat­ed an amend­ment to H.R. 3877 (above) that would have blocked any increase in the statu­to­ry debt lim­it until after Con­gress has imposed fis­cal dis­ci­pline in three areas.

The Sen­ate and House would have to enact major spend­ing cuts, restore spend­ing caps that the under­ly­ing bill removes and send the states a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment requir­ing a bal­anced fed­er­al bud­get. Rand Paul, R‑Kentucky, who spon­sored the amend­ment, said “shame on the politi­cians who have cam­paigned as con­ser­v­a­tives but who have gov­erned as big spenders.”

(Again, as men­tioned, Rand Paul has been crit­i­cized for preach­ing fis­cal dis­ci­pline to his col­leagues when he vot­ed for a huge tax cut bill that was not paid for.)

None of the sev­en­ty sen­a­tors who vot­ed against the pro­pos­al spoke against it.

A yes vote was to adopt the amendment.

Cas­ca­dia total: 2 aye votes, 4 nay votes

UPHOLDING TRUMP VETO OF SAUDI ARMS MEASURE: Vot­ing 45 for and 40 against, the Sen­ate on July 29 failed to over­ride Don­ald Trump’s veto of a mea­sure (S.J. Res 36) that would pro­hib­it the sale of up to $8 bil­lion in U.S. arms to Sau­di Ara­bia and its allies for use against Iran­ian-backed forces in Yemen.

The muni­tions con­sist main­ly of tens of thou­sands of laser-guid­ed “smart” bombs. Crit­ics need­ed a two-thirds major­i­ty of sen­a­tors present and vot­ing to defeat the veto. This marked Trump’s sec­ond suc­cess­ful veto this year of attempts by Con­gress check the admin­is­tra­tion’s expand­ing mil­i­tary alliance with Sau­di Arabia.

With the oth­er veto, Trump turned back a mea­sure that would end U.S. involve­ment in the Yemen war unless it receives con­gres­sion­al autho­riza­tion under the 1973 War Pow­ers Resolution.

Robert Menen­dez, D‑New Jer­sey, said: “This admin­is­tra­tion’s will­ing­ness to turn a blind eye to (Sau­di Ara­bi­a’s) whole­sale slaugh­ter of civil­ians and the mur­der of jour­nal­ists and move for­ward with the sale of these weapons will have a last­ing impli­ca­tion for Amer­i­ca’s moral lead­er­ship on the world stage.”

Jim Risch, R‑Idaho, said the arms deal serves “the legit­i­mate secu­ri­ty inter­ests of our part­ners. Reject­ing these sales at this time will reward recent Iran­ian aggres­sion and risk Iran­ian mis­cal­cu­la­tion, which will lead to dis­as­ter if Iran con­tin­ues down its cur­rent path.”

A yes vote was to over­ride the pres­i­den­tial veto.

Cas­ca­dia total: 4 aye votes, 2 nay votes

CONFIRMING KELLY CRAFT AS UNITED NATIONS AMBASSADOR: Vot­ing 56 for and 34 against, the Sen­ate on July 31 con­firmed Kel­ly Craft as U.S. ambas­sador to the Unit­ed Nations. Craft has been U.S. ambas­sador to Cana­da since Octo­ber 2017 and was an alter­nate del­e­gate to the Unit­ed Nations in the George W. Bush admin­is­tra­tion. She received her appoint­ment to Ottawa after her hus­band, Joe Craft, a Ken­tucky-based coal pro­duc­er, con­tributed more than $1 mil­lion to Don­ald Trump’s pres­i­den­tial campaign.

Repub­li­cans praised Craft’s work in Cana­da on mat­ters includ­ing a trade deal to replace the North Amer­i­can Free Trade Agreement.

But Democ­rats fault­ed her for hav­ing spent 357 days away from Cana­da while ambas­sador and for allow­ing her hus­band to take part in meet­ings on ener­gy and envi­ron­men­tal poli­cies. They also crit­i­cized Craft for doubt­ing the sci­ence val­i­dat­ing glob­al warm­ing and cli­mate damage.

Top Sen­ate Repub­li­can Mitch McConnell, R‑Kentucky., said Craft has a record of “skill­ful­ly and effec­tive­ly advo­cat­ing for the inter­ests of the Unit­ed States on the inter­na­tion­al stage,” includ­ing help­ing to fash­ion a U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agree­ment now await­ing con­gres­sion­al approval.

Robert Menen­dez, D‑New Jer­sey, said: “Tak­en togeth­er, Ambas­sador Craft’s lack of expe­ri­ence, her dere­lic­tion of duty and exces­sive absences in Ottawa, and her unwill­ing­ness to address poten­tial con­flicts of inter­est, ren­der her unfit to serve as our ambas­sador to the Unit­ed Nations.”

A yes vote was to con­firm the nominee.

Cas­ca­dia total: 2 aye votes, 4 nay votes

LWIC will be on hiatus for several weeks

The House and Sen­ate are in recess until the week of Sep­tem­ber 9th, so there will be no fur­ther install­ments of Last Week In Con­gress until mid-September.

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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