Good morn­ing! Here’s how Cascadia’s Mem­bers of Con­gress vot­ed on major issues dur­ing the leg­isla­tive week end­ing Sat­ur­day, March 14th.

In the United States House of Representatives

The House cham­ber (U.S. Con­gress photo)

APPROVING CORONAVIRUS RELIEF AND ECONOMIC STIMULUS: Vot­ing 363 for and 40 against, the House just before 1 AM on March 14th approved tens of bil­lions of dol­lars in stim­u­lus and safe­ty-net spend­ing to cush­ion the eco­nom­ic and social impacts of the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic on indi­vid­u­als, fam­i­lies and main­ly small and medi­um-size busi­ness­es in the Unit­ed States.

The bill (H.R. 6201) would appro­pri­ate $1 bil­lion to pro­vide free virus test­ing for all who request it, from the unin­sured to Med­ic­aid and Medicare recip­i­ents to indi­vid­u­als with pri­vate med­ical insur­ance; $1 bil­lion to expand food stamps, nutri­tion pro­grams for the poor and meals pro­grams for seniors and K‑12 stu­dents whose schools were closed; and $1 bil­lion to expand state-fed­er­al unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits while deliv­er­ing the checks more promptly.

The bill also would fund a 6.2 per­cent increase in Med­ic­aid pay­ments to states, grant lia­bil­i­ty pro­tec­tions to man­u­fac­tur­ers of res­pi­ra­to­ry masks and delay fil­ing dead­lines for cer­tain busi­ness and per­son­al tax returns.

In addi­tion, the bill would autho­rize two weeks’ paid sick leave and up to three weeks’ paid med­ical and fam­i­ly leave through Decem­ber to indi­vid­u­als and house­holds affect­ed by the coro­n­avirus cri­sis, using tax cred­its to ful­ly reim­burse qual­i­fied employ­ers for the cost of pro­vid­ing the leave.

Leave pay­ments would have to be at least two-thirds of nor­mal lev­els. Gov­ern­ment employ­ees would receive equiv­a­lent leave benefits.

Richard Neal, D‑Massachusetts, called it “imper­a­tive that any­one who needs to be test­ed for coro­n­avirus is able to afford that test­ing” because: “If indi­vid­u­als wor­ry that they can’t afford the cost of the test, they will for­go it and risk endan­ger­ing them­selves and their community.”

Kay Granger, R‑Texas, said “we must pass this bill today to help lessen the dev­as­tat­ing impact of this glob­al pan­dem­ic on the Amer­i­can people.”

No mem­ber spoke against the bill.

A yes vote was to send the bill to the Senate.

	Vot­ing Aye (1): Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mike Simpson Vot­ing Nay (1): Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Russ Fulcher
	Vot­ing Aye (5): Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Suzanne Bonam­i­ci, Earl Blu­me­nauer, Peter DeFazio, Kurt Schrad­er; Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Greg Walden
	Vot­ing Aye (10): Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Suzan Del­Bene, Rick Larsen, Derek Kilmer, Prami­la Jaya­pal, Kim Schri­er, Adam Smith, and Den­ny Heck; Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Jaime Her­rera-Beut­ler, Dan New­house, and Cathy McMor­ris Rodgers

Cas­ca­dia total: 16 aye votes, 1 nay vote

RENEWING SURVEILLANCE AUTHORITY FOR FIVE YEARS: Vot­ing 278 for and 136 against, the House on March 11th approved a five-year exten­sion (H.R. 6172) of three sec­tions of the For­eign Intel­li­gence Sur­veil­lance Act (FISA) that require peri­od­ic con­gres­sion­al renew­al because of the law’s direct clash with Amer­i­cans’ con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly-guar­an­teed civ­il liberties.

One sec­tion allows law enforce­ment to place rov­ing wire­taps on home­grown or for­eign ter­ror­ist sus­pects mov­ing about the Unit­ed States, and anoth­er per­mits gov­ern­ment sur­veil­lance on U.S. soil of for­eign “lone wolf” sus­pects not linked to ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions. Under the third sec­tion, the For­eign Intel­li­gence Sur­veil­lance Court can autho­rize for­ev­er-secret FBI search­es of library, book­store and busi­ness records in the Unit­ed States if the agency shows “rea­son­able grounds” the tar­get­ed infor­ma­tion is vital to an ongo­ing domes­tic probe of specif­i­cal­ly defined for­eign-spon­sored threats to nation­al security.

This author­i­ty is root­ed in Sec­tion 215 of FISA, a law enact­ed in 1978 and expand­ed after the attacks of Sep­tem­ber 11th, 2001, to strength­en gov­ern­ment pow­ers to detect and pre­vent ter­ror­ist threats to America.

In part, this bill:

• Pro­hibits the use of Sec­tion 215 to obtain GPS and cell-phone locations;
• Requires most infor­ma­tion obtained in Sec­tion 215 search­es to be destroyed after five years;
• Requires the attor­ney gen­er­al to approve in writ­ing FISA war­rants issued against elect­ed offi­cials or candidates;
• Expands Civ­il Lib­er­ties Over­sight Board pow­ers to mon­i­tor abus­es in the dis­charge of the FISA law;
• Allows inde­pen­dent out­side reviews of cer­tain FISA court deliberations;
• Restricts the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agen­cy’s already-scaled-back col­lec­tion of meta data on telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions pass­ing through U.S. switch­ing points;
• … and requires the gov­ern­ment to dis­close with­in one hun­dred and eighty days all sub­stan­tive opin­ions by the FISA court.

Mike Quigley, D‑Illinois, said it “strikes just the right bal­ance between pro­tect­ing our nation­al secu­ri­ty and strength­en­ing civ­il lib­er­ties. It pre­serves crit­i­cal tools used by author­i­ties to inves­ti­gate inter­na­tion­al ter­ror­ism and for­eign intel­li­gence mat­ters, but also makes sig­nif­i­cant reforms to enhance pri­va­cy and transparency.”

Louie Gohmert, R‑Texas, said: “We need to fix the FISA court. This doesn’t do it, and I will vote ‘no’ until we have ade­quate reforms that do.”

A yes vote was to send the bill to the Senate.

	Vot­ing Aye (1): Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mike Simpson Vot­ing Nay (1): Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Russ Fulcher
	Vot­ing Aye (1): Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Kurt Schrader Vot­ing Nay (4): Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Suzanne Bonam­i­ci, Earl Blu­me­nauer, and Peter DeFazio; Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Greg Walden
	Vot­ing Aye (5): Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Rick Larsen, Derek Kilmer, Kim Schri­er, and Den­ny Heck; Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Dan Newhouse Vot­ing Nay (5): Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Suzan Del­Bene, Prami­la Jaya­pal, and Adam Smith; Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Jaime Her­rera-Beut­ler and Cathy McMor­ris Rodgers

Cas­ca­dia total: 7 aye votes, 10 nay votes

ASSERTING CONGRESSIONAL WAR POWERS: The House on March 11th vot­ed, 227 for and 186 against, to require the admin­is­tra­tion to obtain advance con­gres­sion­al approval for mil­i­tary actions against Iran or its proxy forces except when there is an immi­nent threat to the Unit­ed States, its armed forces or its ter­ri­to­ries. The bipar­ti­san vote sent the mea­sure (SJ Res 68) to Don­ald Trump and his expect­ed veto. The mea­sure invokes the 1973 War Pow­ers Res­o­lu­tion, which asserts the pow­er of Con­gress to declare war under Arti­cle I of the Constitution.

Under that Viet­nam-era law, pres­i­dents must noti­fy Con­gress with­in 48 hours when they send the U.S. mil­i­tary into com­bat, then with­draw the forces with­in a set peri­od unless Con­gress has autho­rized the action.

Our own Prami­la Jaya­pal, D‑Washington and Co-Chair of the Pro­gres­sive Cau­cus, said: “The Amer­i­can peo­ple have spo­ken. They don’t want us in end­less wars with­out autho­riza­tion from Con­gress, with­out a debate here in Con­gress, with­out uti­liz­ing those con­sti­tu­tion­al pow­ers that our found­ing framers gave us.”

Michael McCaul, R‑Texas, said: “This polit­i­cal War Pow­ers Res­o­lu­tion is based on a false premise. It orders the pres­i­dent to ter­mi­nate hos­til­i­ties against Iran. The prob­lem is we are not engaged in hos­til­i­ties in Iran.”

A yes vote was to send the mea­sure to the White House.

	Vot­ing Nay (2): Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Russ Fulcher and Mike Simpson
	Vot­ing Aye (4): Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Suzanne Bonam­i­ci, Earl Blu­me­nauer, Peter DeFazio, Kurt Schrader Vot­ing Nay (1): Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Greg Walden
	Vot­ing Aye (7): Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Suzan Del­Bene, Rick Larsen, Derek Kilmer, Prami­la Jaya­pal, Kim Schri­er, Adam Smith, and Den­ny Heck Vot­ing Nay (3): Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Jaime Her­rera-Beut­ler, Dan New­house, and Cathy McMor­ris Rodgers

Cas­ca­dia total: 11 aye votes, 6 nay votes

In the United States Senate

The Sen­ate cham­ber (U.S. Con­gress photo)

KILLING ADMINISTRATION RULE ON STUDENT LOAN FORGIVENESS: Vot­ing 53 for and 42 against, the Sen­ate on March 11 joined the House in nul­li­fy­ing a Trump admin­is­tra­tion rule on debt-for­give­ness sought by more than 200,000 fed­er­al stu­dent-loan bor­row­ers who allege that their school fraud­u­lent­ly mis­rep­re­sent­ed the qual­i­ty of edu­ca­tion they would receive.

The bor­row­ers’ claims have been lodged main­ly against for-prof­it schools such as the ITT Tech­ni­cal Insti­tute [ITT orig­i­nal­ly stood for “Inter­na­tion­al Tele­phone & Tele­graph”] and Corinthi­an Col­leges that abrupt­ly went out of busi­ness, leav­ing them with steep debt but no degree and cur­tailed earn­ing pow­er. Crit­ics said the Trump rule would pro­vide debt for­give­ness to only three per­cent of claimants.

But Edu­ca­tion Sec­re­tary Bet­sy DeVos said in con­gres­sion­al tes­ti­mo­ny it would cor­rect the “blan­ket for­give­ness” of an Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion rule it replaced. The new rule bars class-action law­suits against schools and requires claims to be adju­di­cat­ed one-by-one by manda­to­ry arbi­tra­tion rather than in open court, with bor­row­ers pro­hib­it­ed from appeal­ing the deci­sion. The rule sets a stan­dard of evi­dence requir­ing bor­row­ers to prove the fraud was intentional.

Richard Durbin, D‑Illinois, said:

“How many times have we giv­en speech­es about how much we care about vet­er­ans? Here is a chance to vote with the vet­er­ans, espe­cial­ly those who have been defraud­ed out of their GI bill of rights and have end­ed up with addi­tion­al debt.…These stu­dents were mis­led by these schools, and these schools are noto­ri­ous for it. The ques­tion is this: Are we going to stand up for the stu­dents, many of whom are vet­er­ans, or are we going to stand up for the schools…?

No sen­a­tor spoke in sup­port of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s rule on stu­dent-loan for­give­ness. A yes vote was to send HJ Res 76 to the White House.

	Vot­ing Nay (2): Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors Jim Risch and Mike Crapo
	Vot­ing Aye (2): Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley
	Vot­ing Aye (2): Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Maria Cantwell and Pat­ty Murray

Cas­ca­dia total: 4 aye votes, 2 nay votes

Key votes ahead

Next week (begin­ning March 16th), the Sen­ate will take up the Fam­i­lies First Coro­n­avirus Response Act and the For­eign Intel­li­gence Sur­veil­lance Act dis­cussed above. The House is ten­ta­tive­ly sched­uled to be in recess.

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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