Last Week In Congress: How Cascadia’s U.S. lawmakers voted (January 3rd-7th)

Good morn­ing! Here’s how Cascadia’s Unit­ed States Sen­a­tors vot­ed on major issues dur­ing the leg­isla­tive week end­ing Fri­day, Jan­u­ary 7th, 2021.

There were no key votes in the House this week.

This week marked the begin­ning of the sec­ond ses­sion of the 117th Unit­ed States Con­gress, the cur­rent meet­ing of the coun­ty’s bicam­er­al leg­isla­tive branch. The first ses­sion began on Jan­u­ary 3rd, 2021 and end­ed one year later.

The sec­ond ses­sion is now under­way. The 117th Con­gress is the first Con­gress since the 111th in which Democ­rats have had a fed­er­al tri­fec­ta (con­trol of both leg­isla­tive cham­bers plus the exec­u­tive branch), although their Sen­ate major­i­ty is razor thin and their House major­i­ty is small­er than in the 116th Congress.

The 117th Con­gress will end in a year’s time. The 2022 midterm elec­tions will deter­mine the make­up of the 118th Con­gress, set to con­vene Jan­u­ary 3rd, 2023.

In the United States Senate

ANNE WITKOWSKY, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE: The Sen­ate on Jan­u­ary 5th con­firmed the nom­i­na­tion of Anne Witkowsky to serve as the State Depart­men­t’s assis­tant sec­re­tary for con­flict and sta­bi­liza­tion oper­a­tions. Witkowsky has been a senior offi­cial at the Defense Depart­ment and State Depart­ment, and most recent­ly was co-direc­tor of the pri­vate Task Force on U.S. Strat­e­gy to Sup­port Democ­ra­cy and Counter Authoritarianism.

The vote was 61 yeas to 26 nays.

	Vot­ing Aye (1): Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor Mike Crapo Not Vot­ing (1): Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor Jim Risch
	Vot­ing Aye (2): Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley
	Vot­ing Aye (1): Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tor Maria Cantwell Not Vot­ing (1): Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Murray

Cas­ca­dia total: 4 aye votes, 2 not voting

Key votes ahead

The House will con­sid­er amend­ments to the Sen­ate’s ver­sion of the NASA Enhanced Use Leas­ing Exten­sion Act of 2021 as well as H.R. 1836, the Guard and Reserve GI Bill Par­i­ty Act of 2021. The Sen­ate is expect­ed to con­sid­er the nom­i­na­tions of Gabriel P. Sanchez and Hol­ly A. Thomas to be Ninth Cir­cuit Court Judges, as well as nom­i­na­tions for exec­u­tive positions.

Editor’s Note: The infor­ma­tion in NPI’s week­ly How Cascadia’s U.S. law­mak­ers vot­ed fea­ture is pro­vid­ed by Tar­get­ed News Ser­vice. 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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