Last Week In Congress: How Cascadia’s U.S. lawmakers voted (May 4th-8th)

Good morn­ing! Here’s how Cascadia’s Unit­ed States Sen­a­tors vot­ed on major issues dur­ing the leg­isla­tive week end­ing Fri­day, May 8th, 2020.

The House was in recess.

In the United States Senate

CONFIRMING HEAD OF COUNTERINTELLIGENCE: Vot­ing 84 for and sev­en against, the Sen­ate on May 6th con­firmed William R. Evan­i­na as direc­tor of the Nation­al Coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence and Secu­ri­ty Cen­ter over crit­i­cism that he has been a reluc­tant sup­port­er of whistle­blow­er rights. The NCSC is the lead U.S. agency for safe­guard­ing Amer­i­ca against for­eign intel­li­gence penetrations.

The vote keeps Evan­i­na in a post he assumed in 2014 when Sen­ate con­fir­ma­tion was not required. After join­ing the FBI as a spe­cial agent in 1996, he inves­ti­gat­ed orga­nized crime and ter­ror­ist activ­i­ties, and he was pro­mot­ed in 2013 to head FBI-CIA joint coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence oper­a­tions. In 2014, Evan­i­na was tasked with putting into effect a new law pro­hibit­ing retal­i­a­tion against whistle­blow­ers in the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty by revok­ing their secu­ri­ty clearances.

Sen­ate crit­ics say that six years lat­er, he has not yet com­plet­ed that assignment.

Mark Warn­er, D‑Virginia, called the con­fir­ma­tion essen­tial at a time when the U.S. intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty has no Sen­ate-con­firmed appointees in its top ranks. He said “now more than ever, we need at least one career intel­li­gence pro­fes­sion­al with a good record, con­firmed by this Sen­ate, stand­ing guard over” spy and counter-spy operations.

Ron Wyden, D‑Oregon, said: “The fact is that Mr. Evan­i­na has failed repeat­ed­ly the key test on pro­tect­ing whistle­blow­er rights. Specif­i­cal­ly, he failed to enact whistle­blow­er pro­tec­tions that the Con­gress required in 2014.A six-year track record of let­ting down whistle­blow­ers and fail­ing to fol­low the law.”

A yes vote was to con­firm the nominee.

Cas­ca­dia total: 3 aye votes, 2 nay votes, 1 not voting

UPHOLDING VETO OF WAR POWERS BILL: Vot­ing 49 for and 44 against, the Sen­ate on May 7th failed to reach a two-thirds thresh­old need­ed to over­turn Don­ald Trump’s veto of a res­o­lu­tion (S.J. Res 68) con­cern­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of war with Iran. The mea­sure sought to require the admin­is­tra­tion to obtain advance con­gres­sion­al approval for actions against Iran or its proxy forces except when there is an immi­nent threat to the Unit­ed States.

It did so by invok­ing the 1973 War Pow­ers Res­o­lu­tion, which asserts the pow­er of Con­gress to declare war under Arti­cle I of the Constitution.

Under the 1973 law, pres­i­dents must noti­fy Con­gress with­in forty-eight hours when they send the U.S. mil­i­tary into com­bat, then with­draw the forces with­in a set peri­od unless Con­gress has autho­rized the action.

Jeff Merkley, D‑Oregon, said that as a result of Trump’s words and actions, “we have come with­in a hair’s breadth of war with Iran.The found­ing fathers were adamant about not hav­ing any­thing resem­bling a king in the new coun­try they were build­ing. The pres­i­dent was giv­en the pow­er to lead the nation’s armed forces as com­man­der in chief, but Arti­cle I, Sec­tion 8 of the Con­sti­tu­tion stat­ed: ‘The Con­gress shall have Pow­er… To declare war.’ ”

James Inhofe, R‑Oklahoma, said “nobody should want a pol­i­cy that would leave Amer­i­cans vul­ner­a­ble to the whims of Iran’s ter­ror­ist-sup­port­ing regime. If we do that, if we tie the pres­i­den­t’s hands so that he can­not defend Amer­i­can lives, we leave our­selves more vul­ner­a­ble and, there­fore, make war infi­nite­ly more like­ly, and accord­ing­ly, we must all vote to sus­tain the Pres­i­den­t’s veto.”

A yes vote was to over­ride the veto.

Cas­ca­dia total: 3 aye votes, 2 nay votes, 1 not voting

Key votes ahead

The House will take up Con­gress’s fifth coro­n­avirus relief bill in the week of May 11th, while the Sen­ate will vote on judi­cial and exec­u­tive branch nominations.

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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