CONGRESSIONAL ROLL CALL
Here’s how area members of Congress voted on major issues during the legislative week ending July 12.
HOUSE
GREEN CARDS: Voting 365-65, the House on July 10 passed a bill (HR 1044) that would change how “green cards” granting permanent legal status are allocated by U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services to immigrants living in the United States on temporary, employmentbased H1-B visas.
Those visas are used primarily to bring highly skilled, well-educated foreigners into the U.S. workforce for periods generally ranging from three to six years, after which they are usually required leave the country if they have not received a green card. The bill would remove per-country caps on the number of employmentbased green cards issued each year, and instead award them first-come, first-served.
The current caps prohibit natives of any country from receiving more than 7percent of the annual number of permanent, employment-based visas. That disadvantages workers from populous countries supplying large numbers of H1-B recipients. Those from smaller countries do not wait nearly as long. A yes vote was to send the bill to the Senate.
Antonio Delgado, D-Rhinebeck: Yes Sean Maloney, D-Cold Spring: Yes
U.S. BASES OVERSEAS:
Voting 219-210, the House on July 11required the Department of Defense to provide Congress with an inventory of U.S. military installations on foreign territory along with the cost of operating each one and an explanation of how it serves national security. The amendment was added to the fiscal 2020military policy bill (HR 2500). The department reportedly owns several hundred permanent bases and short-term military facilities abroad, and the first-ever audit of Pentagon operations, released last November, was unable to pinpoint some of them. A yes vote was to require an inventory of U.S. military holdings abroad. Delgado: Yes Maloney: Yes
FEDERAL CONTRACTS:
Voting 243-186, the House on July 11amended HR 2500 (above) to prohibit presidents, vice presidents and Cabinet members from holding contracts with the U.S. government, just as members of Congress are barred by federal law from doing. The rationale of the ban is that high federal officials, as insiders, could exert undue influence over the terms of the contract. The expanded ban presumably would prohibit any attempted renewal of the government’s contract for leasing the Old Post Office on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington to the Trump International Hotel, which generates profits for the Trump Organization and therefore the president. A yes vote was to bar top executive branch officials, including presidents, from holding federal contracts. Delgado: Yes Maloney: Yes PROTECTING AGENCY: Voting 247-182, the House on July 11 adopted an amendment to HR 2500(above) that would scuttle a Trump administration proposal to downgrade the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) by merging it with the General Services Administration (GSA). With 5,500employees, the OPM administers programs ranging from health insurance to retirement accounts for millions of active and retired federal civilian workers and their families. The GSA, with a staff of 12,000, is charged with managing federal office space, transportation, communications and procurement, among other duties. A yes vote was to adopt the amendment. Delgado: Yes Maloney: Yes 9⁄11 VICTIMS’ FUND: By a vote of 402-12, the House on July 12passed a bipartisan bill that would reauthorize the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund through fiscal 2090. Administered by a special master, the fund pays economic and non-economic damages to 9⁄11 first responders and their survivors, as well as to individuals with health problems as a result of participating in 9⁄11 cleanup efforts, and to their survivors. In addition, the bill would allow claims to be filed until October 2089, remove a cap on noneconomic damages in certain circumstances and index for inflation the program’s annual limits on compensation for economic losses. The bill replenishes the fund to avert threatened cuts of up to 70percent in pending and future claims and makes whole claims already paid at reduced levels. Although the bill is projected to cost $10.2billion in its first 10 years, and countless billions after that as cancers and other latent diseases emerge, it does not yet include a “pay for” mechanism or long-term funding means. A yes vote was to send the bill to the Senate. Delgado: Yes Maloney: Yes
$733B FOR MILITARY: Voting 220-197, the House on July 12 authorized a $733billion military budget (HR 2500) for fiscal 2020, including $69billion for combat operations and more than $57billion for active-duty and retiree health care. The bill sets a 3.1percent pay raise for uniformed personnel; addresses global warming as a national-security threat; advances the closure of the Guantanamo Bay military prison; requires Pentagon strategies for countering Russian interference in the 2020U.S. elections; lifts an administration ban on transgender military service; prohibits U.S. troop reductions in South Korea below 28,000; funds programs for military victims of sexual assault; and approves tens of billions for conventional and nuclear weapons while defunding the development of low-yield nuclear weapons. In addition, the bill requires what would be the first congressional authorization for the U.S. war against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) forces in the Middle East. At the same time, it would effectively repeal the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), which, along with the Iraq war resolution approved in 2002, has been the legal basis of U.S. military actions since 9⁄11. The bill also would establish 12 weeks’ paid family and medical leave for the federal workforce to accommodate circumstances including childbirth, adoptions, foster care and serious illness. The leave is now available without pay to civil servants under the 1993Family and Medical Leave Act. In addition, the bill allows military personnel who are victims of sexual assaults to receive emergency contraception at base clinics, and eliminates co-pays for contraceptive services provided by the Department of Defense healthcare system. The bill also would bar funding for space-based missile defenses; prohibit the diversion of military funds to wall construction on the southwest border; halt the sale of F-35aircraft to Turkey unless it cancels its purchase an air defense system from Russia; require the Marine Corps to admit women to basic training; fund repair of earthquake damages to military bases in southern California; require more accurate and transparent reporting of U.S.-caused civilian casualties; and provide $250 million to in security assistance to Ukraine. A yes vote was to send the bill to a House-Senate conference committee. Delgado: Yes Maloney: Yes LOW-YIELD NUKES: Voting 201in favor and 221opposed, the House on June 12defeated a Republican amendment to HR 2500(above) that sought to fund an administration plan to start mounting low-yield nuclear weapons (W76-2warheads) on submarine-launched Trident ballistic missiles. Military planners say low-yield, or tactical, warheads are for use in limited conflicts, in contrast to strategic nuclear weapons, which are designed to destroy targets far from the immediate battlefield. Advocates say the United States needs to counter Russia’s extensive low-yield arsenal, while critics say the weapons heighten the risk of Armageddon because it is folly to think nuclear war can be waged on a limited basis. A yes vote was to add low-yield nuclear weapons to the U.S. arsenal.
Delgado: No Maloney: No COMBAT READINESS, PAY
RAISE: Voting 204in favor and 212opposed, the House on July 12defeated a Republican motion that sought to add nearly $3 billion to HR 2500(above) for purposes such as expanding combat accounts and increasing the bill’s pay raise for uniformed personnel from the 3.1percent level requested by President Trump to 4percent. A yes vote was to adopt the motion.
Delgado: No Maloney: No
SENATE
ASSISTANT LABOR SECRETARY: Voting 54-39, the Senate on July 10confirmed John P. Pallasch, the head of Kentucky’s employment and training agency, as an assistant secretary in the Department of Labor. He will lead the Employment and Training Administration, which consumes nearly two-thirds of the department’s budget while administering workplace programs for 22million Americans. Pallasch was head of the Mine Safety and Health Administration in the George W. Bush administration. A yes vote was to confirm the nominee. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.: No Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y: Did not vote
ASSISTANT EDUCATION
SECRETARY: The Senate on July 11confirmed, 56-37, Robert L. King, the president of the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education, as assistant secretary of postsecondary education. He served previously as head of the Arizona Community Foundation and chancellor of the State University of New York system, and he was an aide to former New York Gov. George Pataki. A yes vote was to confirm the nominee.
Schumer: No Gillibrand: Did not vote
COMING UP
The House this week will vote on raising the federal minimum wage and on whether to hold Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in criminal contempt of Congress over their disregard of committee subpoenas. The Senate will vote on judicial and executive branch nominations.