Last Week In Congress: How Cascadia’s U.S. lawmakers voted (May 11th-15th)

Good morn­ing! Here’s how Cascadia’s Mem­bers of Con­gress vot­ed on major issues dur­ing the leg­isla­tive week end­ing Fri­day, May 15th, 2020.

In the United States House of Representatives

CONDUCTING HOUSE BUSINESS BY REMOTE VOTING: Vot­ing 217 for and 189 against, the House on May 15th changed its rules to allow mem­bers to vote remote­ly in floor pro­ceed­ings for the first time in the 231-year his­to­ry of the insti­tu­tion. The mea­sure (H. Res­o­lu­tion 965) also per­mits House com­mit­tees to con­duct com­mit­tee busi­ness by remote con­nec­tions includ­ing video links.

A response to the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, the res­o­lu­tion pro­vides that the rules we sub­ject to a vote of renew­al in forty-five days (or else shall expire). For vot­ing on the House floor, each phys­i­cal­ly-present mem­ber would be autho­rized to vote by proxy for up to ten absent col­leagues whose vot­ing instruc­tions, filed elec­tron­i­cal­ly with the clerk’s office, he or she would be oblig­at­ed to follow.

Jim McGov­ern, D‑Massachusetts, said: “This is not just about pro­tect­ing mem­bers of Con­gress [but] about pro­tect­ing all of those who come in con­tact with us.Convening Con­gress must not turn onto a super-spread­er event. Tech­nol­o­gy has changed con­sid­er­ably over the last 231 years. There are now tools avail­able to make com­mit­tee pro­ceed­ings and remote vot­ing on the House floor possible.”

Mac Thorn­ber­ry, R‑Texas, said: “Through the Civ­il War, the 1918 flu, World War II, [Sep­tem­ber 11th, 2001], through­out our his­to­ry, there has nev­er been proxy vot­ing on this floor. Mem­bers accept­ed the risk and car­ried out their duty to the best of their abil­i­ty. It was not about tech­nol­o­gy, it was about trust and integri­ty. Were our pre­de­ces­sors so much braver than we are?”

A yes vote was to adopt the resolution.

Cas­ca­dia total: 10 aye votes, 7 nay votes

APPROVING $3 TRILLION FOR CORONAVIRUS RELIEF: Vot­ing 208 for and 199 against, the House on May 15th approved a $3 tril­lion coro­n­avirus relief pack­age (H.R. 6800, the HEROES Act) that includes:

• near­ly $1 tril­lion for state, local, trib­al and ter­ri­to­r­i­al governments;
• $200 bil­lion to fund haz­ard pay for essen­tial work­ers includ­ing med­ical per­son­nel and first responders;
• $100 bil­lion for hos­pi­tals serv­ing poor communities;
• $100 bil­lion to help ten­ants pay rent;
• $75 bil­lion in home­own­er mort­gage aid;
• $75 bil­lion for test­ing for all and free coro­n­avirus care for those with­out health insurance;
• $25 bil­lion to sus­tain the Postal Service;
• $10 bil­lion in dis­as­ter aid to busi­ness­es and non-prof­its shut out of the Pay­check Pro­tec­tion Program;
• $3.6 bil­lion to boost bal­lot secu­ri­ty and vot­er par­tic­i­pa­tion in this year’s elections;
• $600 mil­lion to help local police depart­ments meet pay­roll and equip­ment costs;
• $600 mil­lion to address virus spread in state and fed­er­al prisons,
• … and unspec­i­fied sums to cov­er $600 per week in enhanced unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits through Jan­u­ary and a sec­ond round of stim­u­lus pay­ments of $1,200 to indi­vid­u­als and $2,400 to fam­i­lies up to cer­tain income lev­els plus expand­ed child tax credits.

In addi­tion, the bill would:

• expand food stamps and nutri­tion­al assis­tance; fund stu­dent-loan for­give­ness of up to $10,000 per borrower;
• open the Patient Care Act to coro­n­avirus vic­tims lack­ing health insurance;
• expand so-called COBRA tem­po­rary med­ical insur­ance to those los­ing cov­er­age at work;
• require the Occu­pa­tion­al Health and Safe­ty Admin­is­tra­tion to invoke coro­n­avirus work­place rules with­in sev­en days;
• delay Cen­sus Bureau dead­lines for sup­ply­ing appor­tion­ment and redis­trict­ing data to jurisdictions;
• pro­vide tax cred­its to incen­tivize employ­ers to retain workers;
• expand earned-income tax cred­its for low-income families;
• tem­porar­i­ly lift a cap on tax deduc­tions for state and local tax pay­ments in cer­tain states and shore up mul­ti-employ­er pen­sion plans in col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing agreements.

Kweisi Mfume, D‑Maryland, said the bill “pro­vides real sup­port for Amer­i­can heroes. Our cops, our teach­ers, our fire­men, our first respon­ders. It is sup­port­ed by Repub­li­cans, and some­body needs to say that. Repub­li­can gov­er­nors. Repub­li­can may­ors. And Repub­li­can mem­bers from that side of the aisle that will vote for this.”

Steve Scalise, R‑Louisiana., said “we should also be talk­ing about what’s not in this bill. [Democ­rats] have $500 bil­lion in this pack­age for states includ­ing many who already wrecked their econ­o­my and had bil­lion dol­lar deficits pri­or to COVID-19. What’s not in this bill is mon­ey to hold Chi­na account­able for this whole mess.”

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

Cas­ca­dia total: 9 aye votes, 8 nay votes

REJECTING REPUBLICAN CHANGE TO HEROES ACT ID: Vot­ing 198 for and 209 against, the House on May 15th defeat­ed a Repub­li­can motion to strip H.R. 6800 (above) of a pro­vi­sion that would broad­en ID require­ments for receiv­ing coro­n­avirus stim­u­lus checks. The dis­put­ed pro­vi­sion is intend­ed to ben­e­fit, among oth­ers, those who do not have a Social Secu­ri­ty num­ber and do not file a fed­er­al tax return because of low income. It allows them to use an IRS Tax­pay­er Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion Num­ber to obtain a stim­u­lus check to which they are enti­tled by law.

The first stim­u­lus round of $1,200 for indi­vid­u­als and $2,400 for fam­i­lies up to cer­tain income lev­els was approved by Con­gress in late March, and the sec­ond round is fund­ed in the cur­rent bill (H.R. 6800).

Den­ver Rig­gle­man, R‑Virginia., said the ID pro­vi­sion would “allow ille­gal immi­grants and non-cit­i­zens to get checks they are not eli­gi­ble for.Now more than ever, we need to make sure these rebate checks go to Amer­i­cans who need them.”

Nita Lowey, D‑New York, said “the only thing Repub­li­cans can offer is regur­gi­tat­ed talk­ing points about immi­gra­tion. COVID-19 does not dis­crim­i­nate or dif­fer­en­ti­ate on immi­gra­tion sta­tus. Our coun­try does­n’t have time for Repub­li­cans to relit­i­gate the cul­ture wars.”

A yes vote was to adopt the Repub­li­can motion.

Cas­ca­dia total: 6 aye votes, 11 nay votes

In the United States Senate

RENEWING DOMESTIC SURVEILLANCE AUTHORITY: Vot­ing 80 for and 16 against, the Sen­ate on May 14th 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 their direct clash with Amer­i­cans’ civ­il lib­er­ties. One sec­tion allows law enforce­ment to place rov­ing wire­taps on home­grown or for­eign ter­ror­ist sus­pects mov­ing about the Unit­ed States, and anoth­er autho­rizes 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 domes­tic library, book­store and busi­ness records 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; 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 180 days all sub­stan­tive opin­ions by the FISA court.

John Cornyn, R‑Texas, said the FISA statute “has been amend­ed sev­er­al times over the more than thir­ty years that it has been law, par­tic­u­lar­ly since 9/11…. It is time to, once again, strength­en the over­sight of our nation’s intel­li­gence activ­i­ties and restore trust in our crit­i­cal institutions.”

Rand Paul, R‑Kentucky, said the orig­i­nal spon­sors of the FISA law, “who intend­ed to restrain uncon­sti­tu­tion­al search­es, would be appalled at what the FISA court has become…that this secret court intend­ed to be used to inves­ti­gate for­eign spies and ter­ror­ists was turned into a pow­er­ful and inva­sive force to infil­trate and dis­rupt the polit­i­cal process.”

A yes vote was to send the bill back to the House.

Cas­ca­dia total: 2 aye votes, 4 nay votes

EXPANDING CIVIL LIBERTIES SAFEGUARDS: Vot­ing 77 for and 19 against, the Sen­ate on May 13th amend­ed H.R. 6172 (above) to expand civ­il lib­er­ties’ pro­tec­tions for reli­gious insti­tu­tions, pub­lic offi­cials, news orga­ni­za­tions and oth­er par­ties tar­get­ed or inno­cent­ly swept up in probes con­duct­ed under Sec­tion 215 of the For­eign Intel­li­gence Sur­veil­lance Act (FISA). The amend­ment would give judges in the secret FISA courts more author­i­ty to order inde­pen­dent “ami­cus curi­ae’ legal reviews by out­side coun­sel of gov­ern­ment actions in such cases.

Patrick Leahy, D‑Vermont., said: “We have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to reform our flawed sur­veil­lance author­i­ties. These oppor­tu­ni­ties don’t come by often. We should­n’t squan­der it, espe­cial­ly when the Jus­tice Depart­men­t’s own inspec­tor gen­er­al has been alert­ing us of the wide­spread prob­lems with­in the FISA process.”

No sen­a­tor spoke against the amendment.

A yes vote was to adopt the amendment.

Cas­ca­dia total: 5 aye votes, 1 not voting

REQUIRING WARRANTS TO OBTAIN COPIES OF WEB BROWSER SEARCHES: Vot­ing 59 for and 37 against, the Sen­ate on May 13th reject­ed an amend­ment to HR 6172 (above) that sought to pro­hib­it fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tors from con­duct­ing war­rant­less search­es of Inter­net brows­er and search-engine his­to­ries under Sec­tion 215 of the For­eign Intel­li­gence Sur­veil­lance Act. Sup­port­ers need­ed six­ty votes to gain approval of their amend­ment and came one shy.

Steve Daines, R‑Montana, said: “Brows­er data is extreme­ly per­son­al, sen­si­tive, and should require a prob­a­ble cause war­rant to access. If you want to see an Amer­i­can’s search his­to­ry, then you bet­ter go to a judge and get a warrant.”

Oppo­nents said that the amend­ment would imper­il nation­al secu­ri­ty by delay­ing FISA court approval of gov­ern­ment appli­ca­tions to sur­veil ter­ror­ism sus­pects on U.S. soil. A yes vote was to adopt the amendment.

Cas­ca­dia total: 5 aye votes, 1 not voting

Key votes ahead

The Sen­ate will debate judi­cial and exec­u­tive branch nom­i­na­tions dur­ing the week of May 18th, and the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives will 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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