Congressional roll call

Here’s how area members of Congress voted during the legislative week ending Feb. 15.

HOUSE

$333B SPENDING PACKAGE: Voting 300-128, the House on Feb. 14 gave final congressional approval to a $333billion appropriations package (HJ Res 31) that funds eight Cabinet departments and numerous agencies in fiscal 2019, ending the prospect of another government shutdown. The bill provides $49.4 billion or the Department of Homeland Security, including $7.6 billion for U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE); $1.325 billion for building 55 miles of physical barriers along the southwest border; $564 million for electronic drug inspections of vehicles and cargo at ports of entry from Mexico; $415 million in humanitarian aid including medical care for immigrants detained at the border; and funding for an annual average of 45,274 beds for immigrants being held while their status is under review. In addition, the bill requires ICE to grant admission to any member of Congress border facilities where children are being housed, publicly report the number and types of immigrants in its custody and preserve all records of sexual assaults occurring under their

custody. A yes vote was to send the bill to President Trump.

Antonio Delgado, DRhinebeck: Yes Sean Maloney, D-Cold Spring: Yes WITHDRAWAL FROM YEMEN: The House on Feb. 13 passed, 248-177, a measure (HJ Res 37) that would withdraw American military support of Yemen’s civil war unless Congress approves the deployment in keeping with its constitutional authority to declare war. If the Senate were to go along, it would mark the first time Congress has used the 1973 War Powers Resolution to stop a military action. A bipartisan coalition of senators last year passed a similar measure, but it never reached a vote in the Republican-led House. The U.S. involvement has consisted mainly of providing logistical and intelligence support, and until recently aerial refueling, to a Saudi-led bombing campaign on Iran-backed Houthi rebels battling the Yemeni military. The four-year conflict has caused what the United Nations calls the world’s worst humanitarian disaster. A yes vote was to send the measure to the Senate. Delgado: Yes Maloney: Yes STATEMENT AGAINST ANTI-SEMITISM: Bya unanimous vote, 424-0, the House on Feb. 13 adopted a Republican-sponsored motion to HJ Res 37 (above) stating, in part, that “antiSemitism is a challenge to the basic principles of tolerance, pluralism and democracy and the shared values that bind Americans together,” and that it is “in the foreign policy interest of the United States to continue to emphasize the importance of combating anti-Semitism in our bilateral and multilateral relations” around the globe. The bill then was amended to include the repudiation of anti-Semitism. A yes vote was to adopt the motion.

Delgado: Yes Maloney: Yes

SENATE

WILLIAM BARR: Voting 54-45, the Senate on Feb. 14 confirmed William Barr as the 85th U.S. attorney general. Barr, 68, also served as the 77th attorney general from 1991-93 under President George H.W. Bush, and he was employed most recently in private practice in Washington. Barr will assume jurisdiction over special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign. Republicans expressed confidence that he will act properly in bridging the gap between Trump and Mueller. But Democrats criticized him over a memo he wrote last June asserting Mueller lacks authority to investigate

Trump for obstruction of justice, and they faulted him for refusing to commit to publicly releasing the special counsel’s final report. A yes vote was to confirm the nominee.

Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.:

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

$333B SPENDING PACKAGE: Voting 83-16, the Senate on Feb. 13 adopted the conference report on a measure (HJ Res 31, above) that would appropriate $333 billion in fiscal 2019 for the departments of Homeland Security, Treasury, Justice, Agriculture, Commerce, Interior, State, Transportation and Housing and Urban Development, and also fund scores of agencies including the Food and Drug Administration, Environmental Protection Agency and Transportation Security Administration. The bill, in addition to what’s listed in the House item above, would fund a 1.9 percent pay raise for federal civilian workers while appropriating $3.82 billion for conducting the 2020 Census; $17 billion for improving roads, bridges, highways, railways and mass transit; $16.6 billion for the Federal Emergency Management Agency; $12 billion in disaster relief; $73.5 billion for the incomesupport program known as food stamps; $159 million for climate research by the National Oceanographic and

Atmospheric Administration; $9.6 billion for the FBI; $2.3 billion for the Drug Enforcement Administration; $75 million for upgrading the National Instant Criminal Background Check System for gun purchases; $21.5 billion for the NASA; $3.22 billion for the National Park Service; $5.1 billion for the Department of State; and $1.05 billion for food-safety inspections. A yes vote was to send the bill to the House. Gillibrand: No Schumer: Yes NATURAL RESOURCES:

Voting 92-8, the Senate on Feb. 12 approved a 662-page package (S 47) of over 100 bills that would improve the management and conservation of natural resources on federal lands including national parks, wilderness areas, national monuments, wild and scenic rivers and wildlife preserves. The bill would set aside 1.3 million acres for wilderness protection; create 367 miles of wild and scenic rivers; establish four new national monuments; prohibit mining near national parks in Montana and Washington; and expand hunting, fishing and other recreational access to federal lands. In addition, the bill would protect fish populations and endangered species; upgrade warning systems for volcanic eruptions; protect facilities at historically black colleges and universities; allow land transfers to improve water resources management; and offer fourth-graders and their families free entrance to certain federal lands. The bill also would reauthorize the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which uses offshore-drilling royalties to help state, local and federal agencies acquire land and easements for conservation and recreational purposes. A yes vote was to send the bill to the House. Gillibrand: Yes Schumer: Yes

COMING UP

Congress is in recess until the week of Feb. 25.