Congressional roll call

Voterama in Congress

Here’s how area members of Congress voted on major issues during the week ending April 13.

HOUSE

COMMUNITY BANKS, VOLCKER RULE: Voting 300-104, the House on April 13 passed a bill (HR 4790) that would exempt most of the nation’s 6,000 smaller “community” banks from the so-called Volcker Rule, which is designed, in part, to prohibit banks from making risky investments that could endanger their solvency and the financial system. A part of the 2010 DoddFrank financial oversight law, the rule bars short-term trading by banks in instruments including stocks, derivatives and commodity futures. Community banks are loosely defined as depository institutions with less than $10 billion in assets. The bill also would give the Federal Reserve exclusive rulemaking authority over the Volcker Rule. A yes vote was to send the bill to the Senate.

John Faso, R-Kinderhook: Yes

Sean Maloney, D-Cold Spring: Yes

BALANCED BUDGET: Voting 233-184, the House on April 12 failed to reach a two-thirds majority needed to pass a balanced-budget constitutional amendment (HJ Res 2). The measure would require votes by three-fifths majorities in each chamber of Congress to raise the national debt limit or pass annual budgets containing deficits, although deficit spending would be allowed to respond to national security crises. Calculations to determine balance would exclude interest payments on the national debt and receipts from Treasury borrowing. A yes vote was to add a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution. Faso: Yes Maloney: No

SOCIAL SECURITY, MEDICARE: Voting 231-186, the House on April 11 killed a bid by Democrats to force debate on an amendment to HJ Res 2 (above) that would protect Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid from the deep governmentwide spending cuts likely to occur each year if a balanced-budget amendment were added to the Constitution. A yes vote opposed a move to exempt social safety net programs from cuts under a balanced-budget constitutional amendment. Faso: Yes Maloney: No

‘TOO BIG TO FAIL’: Voting 297-121, the House on April 11 passed a bill (HR 4061) making it more difficult for the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) to regulate large non-bank financial institutions, such as insurance groups and mutual funds, whose failure could seriously damage financial markets and the overall economy. Under the bill, the FSOC would have to clear newly imposed bureaucratic hurdles before it could designate a non-bank institution for closer federal supervision and potentially new limits on its activities. Comprising the heads of the government’s nine financial regulatory agencies, the FSOC was created by the 2010 Dodd-Frank law to give another layer of scrutiny to “systemically important” banks and non-bank institutions popularly deemed “too big to fail.” The council can require potentially unstable institutions to increase capital and liquidity levels and refrain from certain high-risk business practices, among other steps. A yes vote was to send the bill to the Senate. Faso: Yes Maloney: No

SENATE

DEPUTY EPA CHIEF: Voting 53-45 the Senate on April 12 confirmed Andrew R. Wheeler, a coal lobbyist and critic of limits on fossil fuel emissions by power plants, as deputy administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. His resume includes employment at the EPA under President George H.W. Bush and on the congressional staff of Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla. The Washington law firm Wheeler will leave for his new post represents Murray Energy Corp., the country’s largest owner of underground coal mines. Inhofe said President Trump and EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt “have been delivering relief for the American people and the economy since they’ve been in office,” and that Wheeler will help them in “returning the EPA to an agency of the people, subject to the rule of law.” A yes vote backed Wheeler to serve immediately under EPA chief Pruitt.

Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.:

No Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.: No

COMING UP

The Senate this week will conduct confirmation votes on judicial and executive branch nominations The House schedule was to be announced.