Last Week In Congress: How Cascadia’s U.S. lawmakers voted (February 22nd-27th)

Good morn­ing! Here’s how Cascadia’s Mem­bers of Con­gress vot­ed on major issues dur­ing the leg­isla­tive week end­ing Sat­ur­day, Feb­ru­ary 27th, 2021.

In the United States House of Representatives

APPROVING $1.9 TRILLION IN CORONAVIRUS RELIEF: Vot­ing 219 for and 212 against, the House on Feb­ru­ary 27th approved a $1.9 tril­lion coro­n­avirus relief pack­age (H.R. 1319, dubbed the Amer­i­can Res­cue Plan) that would:

• expand unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits by $400 per week from March 14th through August 29th, 2021;
• deliv­er pay­ments of $1,400 per per­son to indi­vid­u­als earn­ing up to $75,000 and cou­ples up to $150,000;
• raise the fed­er­al min­i­mum wage from $7.25 to $15 per hour by 2025; expand Pay­check Pro­tec­tion Pro­gram ben­e­fits for small busi­ness­es and nonprofits;
• estab­lish a $25 bil­lion grant pro­gram for the restau­rant industry;
• and increase Patient Pro­tec­tion Act pre­mi­um sub­si­dies for a large num­ber of the uninsured.

The bill would raise the Child Tax Cred­it from $2,000 to $3,600 for chil­dren younger than six and $3,000 for ages six through seventeen.

It would make the max­i­mum cred­it refund­able to sin­gle heads of house­hold earn­ing up to $112,500 and mar­ried cou­ples up to $150,000 as well as to fam­i­lies with lit­tle or no income in an attempt to lift 4.1 mil­lion chil­dren above the pover­ty line and reduce child pover­ty by 40 percent.

In addi­tion, the bill would expand the earned income tax cred­it (EITC) for low-income work­ing adults with­out chil­dren at home from $530 to $1,500 per per­son and raise the top income for receiv­ing the cred­it from $16,000 to $21,000 for indi­vid­u­als. It would low­er the age at which non-stu­dents can start claim­ing the EITC from twen­ty-five to sev­en­teen and make the cred­it avail­able to qual­i­fied work­ing seniors over six­ty-five. The bill also would provide:

K‑12 schools: $130 bil­lion for K‑12 schools to be used main­ly to fund ven­ti­la­tion improve­ments and projects to reduce class sizes, reverse pan­dem­ic learn­ing loss­es and sup­ply pro­tec­tive gear to teach­ers and pupils.

High­er edu­ca­tion: $40 bil­lion for post-sec­ondary edu­ca­tion, with col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties required to allo­cate at least half of their sum to Pell Grants.

State, local, and trib­al aid: $350 bil­lion to help state, local, trib­al and ter­ri­to­r­i­al gov­ern­ments meet expens­es includ­ing pay­roll costs of front-line work­ers, with six­ty per­cent direct­ed to states and the Dis­trict of Colum­bia and forty per­cent split between coun­ty and munic­i­pal gov­ern­ments. Trib­al gov­ern­ments would receive $20 bil­lion and ter­ri­to­ries $4.5 billion.

Child­care: $1 bil­lion for Head Start and $39 bil­lion in grants to keep child-care cen­ters open, with low-income fam­i­lies giv­en pri­or­i­ty for receiv­ing child-care tuition aid.

Food and nutri­tion: $12 bil­lion for pro­grams to address hunger, includ­ing the Sup­ple­men­tal Nutri­tion Assis­tance Pro­gram (food stamps), the Women, Infants and Chil­dren (WIC) nutri­tion pro­gram and a pro­gram that elec­tron­i­cal­ly pays gro­cery bills for chil­dren to off­set their loss of school meals.

Help for house­holds: $4.5 bil­lion for the Low-Income Ener­gy Assis­tance Pro­gram for home heat­ing and cool­ing plus bil­lions for Old­er Amer­i­cans Act ben­e­fi­cia­ries and pro­grams address­ing child abuse and domes­tic violence.

Trans­porta­tion: $28 bil­lion for mass tran­sit sys­tems; $8 bil­lion for air­ports; $1.5 bil­lion for Amtrak; and $15 bil­lion in pay­roll sup­port to avert air­line layoffs.

Strength­en­ing vac­ci­na­tion and virus trac­ing: $46 Bil­lion for trac­ing and mon­i­tor­ing COVID-19; $8.5 bil­lion for Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion vac­ci­na­tion efforts; $5.2 bil­lion for vac­cine research and man­u­fac­tur­ing; and $7.6 bil­lion for com­mu­ni­ty health centers.

Defense Pro­duc­tion Act: $10 bil­lion for fast-track­ing the pur­chase of goods and ser­vices for com­bat­ting Covid-19 under the Defense Pro­duc­tion Act.

Hous­ing: $25 bil­lion in rent and util­i­ty assis­tance; $10 bil­lion to help land­lords pay mort­gages, prop­er­ty tax­es and util­i­ty bills; $5 bil­lion for home­less shel­ters; and $5 bil­lion in hous­ing vouch­ers for vic­tims of domes­tic vio­lence and human trafficking.

Agri­cul­ture: $3.6 bil­lion for Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture food dis­tri­b­u­tion and grants and loans to farm­ers, plus hun­dreds of mil­lions for rur­al health care and loans to minor­i­ty farm­ers harmed by his­tor­i­cal­ly biased farm policies.

Vet­er­ans: $13.5 bil­lion for expand­ing health care includ­ing Covid-19 treat­ments for vet­er­ans; $750 mil­lion for vet­er­ans’ day care; $400 mil­lion for job retrain­ing; and $272 mil­lion for pro­cess­ing med­ical claims.

Fam­i­ly and sick leave: $570 mil­lion to fund fam­i­ly and sick leave with pay for postal work­ers and fed­er­al civ­il servants.

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

Cas­ca­dia total: 10 aye votes, 7 nay votes

OUTLAWING DISCRIMINATION BASED ON SEXUAL ORIENTATION: Vot­ing 224 for and 206 against, the House on Feb­ru­ary 25th passed a bill (H.R. 5) that would expand the Civ­il Rights Act of 1964 and Fair Hous­ing Act of 1968 to pro­tect LGBTQ (les­bian, gay, bisex­u­al, trans­gen­der, queer) indi­vid­u­als against dis­crim­i­na­tion based on their sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion or gen­der identity.

The pro­posed Equal­i­ty Act also would expand the Civ­il Rights Act’s list­ing of pub­lic accom­mo­da­tions to include retail stores, banks and trans­porta­tion and health­care ser­vices, and it would des­ig­nate sex­u­al char­ac­ter­is­tics as a pro­tect­ed class in pub­lic accommodations.

In addi­tion, the bill would pro­hib­it the Reli­gious Free­dom Restora­tion Act of 1994 from being invoked to sanc­tion dis­crim­i­na­tion against the LGBTQ community.

Chris Pap­pas, D‑New Hamp­shire, said the bill “will bring our nation clos­er to the promise of its found­ing and change the lives of gen­er­a­tions of LGBTQ Amer­i­cans for the bet­ter. This should be one of the eas­i­est and most affirm­ing votes we ever take. Equal­i­ty is, after all, a self-evi­dent truth. It is part of the bedrock of this nation.”

Greg Steube, R‑Florida, said: “God inten­tion­al­ly made each indi­vid­ual male or female. When men or women claim their own sex­u­al iden­ti­ty they’re mak­ing a state­ment that God did not know what he was doing when he cre­at­ed them.…When the nation’s laws no longer reflect the stan­dards of God, that nation is rebelling against him and will bear the consequences.”

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

Cas­ca­dia total: 11 aye votes, 6 nay votes

PROTECTING WILDERNESS, INCLUDING CASCADIA’S OLYMPICS: Vot­ing 227 for and 200 against, the House on Feb­ru­ary 26th passed a bill (H.R. 803) that would pro­tect more than three mil­lion acres of pub­lic land in the West as wilder­ness while putting a per­ma­nent ban on ura­ni­um min­ing claims on 1.2 mil­lion acres of fed­er­al­ly owned land sur­round­ing Grand Canyon Nation­al Park in north­ern Arizona.

In part, the bill would pro­tect from devel­op­ment more than one mil­lion unspoiled acres in Col­orado, 258,400 acres in Wash­ing­ton, 924,700 acres in Cal­i­for­nia and large swaths of pub­lic land in Ore­gon while expand­ing the Nation­al Wild and Scenic Riv­er Sys­tem by adding four hun­dred and six­ty miles of pro­tect­ed water­ways in Wash­ing­ton and four hun­dred and eighty miles in California.

Diana DeGette, D‑Colorado, said the bill “seeks to pro­tect some of our nation’s most trea­sured pub­lic land” and is about “more than just pro­tect­ing our envi­ron­ment, but pro­tect­ing our econ­o­my and way of life as well” while fur­ther­ing efforts to com­bat cli­mate change.

Doug Lam­born, R‑Colorado, said: “The most basic types of [wild­fire pre­ven­tion] are ille­gal under wilder­ness des­ig­na­tions. You can’t take a chain saw and trim under­brush. Parts of Col­orado are a tin­der box. Should this bill become law, we are going to see big­ger and hot­ter fires. I don’t want to see Col­orado burn up.”

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

Cas­ca­dia total: 12 aye votes, 5 nay votes

FAILING TO BLOCK BIDEN’S ENERGY ORDERS: Vot­ing 204 for and 221 against, the House on Feb­ru­ary 26th defeat­ed a Repub­li­can bid to pre­vent H.R. 803 (above) from becom­ing law until after Pres­i­dent Biden has rescind­ed exec­u­tive orders aimed at trans­form­ing the U.S. ener­gy econ­o­my from one based on fos­sil fuels to clean ener­gy over the next three decades.

A yes vote was to adopt the amendment.

Cas­ca­dia total: 6 aye votes, 11 nay votes

In the United States Senate

JENNIFER GRANHOLM, SECRETARY OF ENERGY: Vot­ing 64 for and 35 against, the Sen­ate on Feb­ru­ary 25th con­firmed Jen­nifer M. Granholm, six­ty-two, as sec­re­tary of ener­gy. She was the first female gov­er­nor of Michi­gan and also served as Michi­gan’s attor­ney gen­er­al, the first woman to hold that post.

A yes vote was to con­firm the nominee.

Cas­ca­dia total: 6 aye votes

THOMAS VILSACK, SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE: Vot­ing 92 for and 7 against, the Sen­ate on Feb­ru­ary 23rd con­firmed Thomas J. Vil­sack, sev­en­ty, as sec­re­tary of agri­cul­ture. A for­mer gov­er­nor of Iowa, he served as agri­cul­ture sec­re­tary through­out both terms of the Barack Oba­ma presidency.

Cas­ca­dia total: 6 aye votes

LINDA THOMAS-GREENFIELD, UNITED NATIONS ENVOY: Vot­ing 78 for and 21 against, the Sen­ate on Feb­ru­ary 23rd con­firmed Lin­da Thomas-Green­field, six­ty-eight, as the Unit­ed States’ ambas­sador to the Unit­ed Nations.

A thir­ty-five-year vet­er­an of the For­eign Ser­vice, she served as assis­tant sec­re­tary of state for African affairs under for­mer Pres­i­dent Barack Obama.

A yes vote was to con­firm the nominee.

Cas­ca­dia total: 6 aye votes

Key votes ahead

The House will take up a bill to reform polic­ing prac­tices in the week of March 1st, while the Sen­ate will debate Pres­i­dent Biden’s Amer­i­can Res­cue Plan.

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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