Last Week In Congress: How Cascadia’s U.S. lawmakers voted (June 15th-19th)

Good morn­ing! Here’s how Cascadia’s Unit­ed States Sen­a­tors vot­ed on major issues dur­ing the leg­isla­tive week end­ing Fri­day, June 19th, 2020.

The House was in recess.

In the United States Senate

REPAIRING NATIONAL PARKS, FUNDING PUBLIC LANDS: Vot­ing 73 for and 25 against, the Sen­ate on June 17th passed a bill (H.R. 1957) that would autho­rize $9.5 bil­lion over five years for repair­ing facil­i­ties at the Nation­al Park Ser­vice, oth­er fed­er­al land agen­cies and Indi­an Edu­ca­tion Ser­vice schools.

In addi­tion, the bill would per­ma­nent­ly require an annu­al bud­get of at least $900 mil­lion for the Land and Water Con­ser­va­tion Fund, which pro­vides fed­er­al and non-fed­er­al agen­cies with rev­enue for acquir­ing unde­vel­oped land for con­ser­va­tion and recre­ation­al purposes.

All fund­ing in the bill would come from roy­al­ties from oil and gas drilling oper­a­tions on fed­er­al prop­er­ty. The bill would set aside about $6.5 bil­lion over five years for long-neglect­ed repairs at scores of nation­al parks and relat­ed prop­er­ties, gen­er­at­ing tens of thou­sands of pri­vate-sec­tor jobs and halv­ing the park ser­vice’s $12.5 bil­lion back­log of unfund­ed maintenance.

Steve Daines, R‑Montana, one of the bil­l’s Repub­li­can sup­port­ers, said: “Today, for the first time ever in the U.S. Sen­ate, we will vote to make fund­ing for a crit­i­cal con­ser­va­tion pro­gram, the Land and Water Con­ser­va­tion Fund, full and manda­to­ry. This fund­ing will pro­tect the pro­gram and pro­vide cer­tain­ty for our land man­agers, for con­ser­va­tion­ists, for sports men and women.”

Bill Cas­sidy, R‑Louisiana, said the bill wrong­ly excludes coastal storm-mit­i­ga­tion projects from the Land and Water Con­ser­va­tion Fund. He said that “because sea lev­els are ris­ing,” res­i­dents of coastal states “are increas­ing­ly exposed to flood­ing” and “will be increas­ing­ly in danger.”

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

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

WAIVING RULE ON DEFICIT SPENDING: The Sen­ate on June 15th vot­ed, 68 for and 30 against, to allow H.R. 1957 (above) to move for­ward as a deficit-spend­ing mea­sure. The bill is pro­ject­ed to add at least $17 bil­lion to the nation­al debt over 10 years, accord­ing to Sen. Mike Enzi, R‑Wyoming.

On this vote, the Sen­ate waived a pay-as-you-go bud­get require­ment that increas­es in manda­to­ry-spend­ing pro­grams must be off­set by tax hikes or manda­to­ry-spend­ing cuts else­where in the budget.

Our own Maria Cantwell, D‑Washington, who sup­port­ed the waiv­er, told col­leagues and peo­ple watch­ing on C‑SPAN: “I can’t ask for a bet­ter tax pol­i­cy or fis­cal pol­i­cy than to use [oil and gas roy­al­ties] to pre­serve open space and pub­lic land and gen­er­ate rev­enue and help all of us enjoy the outdoors.”

Enzi, an oppo­nent of the waiv­er, said: “Dur­ing this fis­cal year, we have already run up a deficit of $1.9 tril­lion — more than twice the size of the deficit we ran at the same time last year. We also just added $2.4 tril­lion to our debt as the nation nec­es­sar­i­ly respond­ed to the coro­n­avirus pandemic.”

A yes vote was to exempt the bill from a “deficit neu­tral” bud­get rule.

Cas­ca­dia total: 4 aye votes, 2 nay votes

CONFIRMING JUSTIN WALKER AS APPELLATE JUDGE: Vot­ing 51 for and 42 against, the Sen­ate on June 18th con­firmed Justin R. Walk­er, 38, to serve on the Unit­ed States Court of Appeals for the Dis­trict of Colum­bia, which is regard­ed as the sec­ond most impor­tant U.S. court because it has juris­dic­tion over fed­er­al agen­cies and the reg­u­la­tions they issue.

Walk­er’s judi­cial expe­ri­ence con­sists of nine months’ ser­vice as a fed­er­al dis­trict court judge in Ken­tucky. He is a for­mer fac­ul­ty mem­ber at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Louisville Law School and protg of Major­i­ty Leader Mitch McConnell, and his resume also includes clerk­ships for for­mer Supreme Court Jus­tice Antho­ny Kennedy and then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh of the D.C. appel­late court.

McConnell, R‑Kentucky, describ­ing his pro­tege, said Walk­er has “demon­strat­ed an impres­sive grasp of legal prece­dent. At his cur­rent post as dis­trict judge for the West­ern Dis­trict of Ken­tucky, he elo­quent­ly applied this under­stand­ing to uphold Amer­i­cans’ reli­gious lib­er­ty, and he earned the approval of the Amer­i­can Bar Asso­ci­a­tion with a rat­ing of well-qualified.”

Demo­c­ra­t­ic Leader Chuck Schumer, D‑New York, said: “I would like [Mitch] McConnell to go home and tell the cit­i­zens of Ken­tucky why he nom­i­nat­ed some­one who wants to repeal our health­care law when the COVID cri­sis is hurt­ing peo­ple there as it is every­where else. In the mid­dle of a nation­al health­care cri­sis, the Repub­li­can Sen­ate major­i­ty is poised to con­firm a judge who oppos­es [the Patient Pro­tec­tion and Afford­able Care Act].

A yes vote was to con­firm the nominee.

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

Key votes ahead

Both cham­bers will take up mea­sures to reform polic­ing prac­tices in the week of June 22nd, and the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives will also con­sid­er a bill grant­i­ng state­hood to the Dis­trict of Columbia.

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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