Open Congress : Blog

Trending on OpenCongress

2009-07-02T16:23:00Z

Unsurprisingly, the recently voted-upon Cap-and-Trade bill has been dominating the discourse and attention of OpenCongress users this past week. Behind all that action, however, users have kept on voting on bills, members, and issue areas via our Battle Royal function. Here are some highlights of those trending bills, which we didn’t want to slip by, unnoticed.

1. H.R.2996: Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act

Voted on a quarter hour before the House began its debate of the climate change bill, this bill grants appropriations to agencies within the Department of the Interior, departments related to health and the environment, and a third group of assorted agencies ranging from the Office of Navajo and Hopi Indian Relocation to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The bill passed the House by a vote of 254-173 with three amendments, largely refocusing $37 million in funding to environmental restoration projects. On a less predictable note, however, the last amendment touches on the U.S. government’s efforts to mitigate the national demand and traffic of illicit drugs. The amendment more specifically provides funding for efforts related to removing marijuana sites and clandestine methamphetamine labs from the National Forest System as well as prohibiting drug traffickers on NFS lands bordering Canada and Mexico.

2. H.R.634: Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act

This bill seeks to prohibit transporting a minor across state lines in order to obtain an abortion by deeming such traffic to be a de facto violation of parental rights and the parental notification requirements of some states. Similarly the bill seeks to criminalize physicians who, knowingly, perform such abortions. As abortion is an extremely contentious issue, for which semantics play a vital role, the bill explicitly defines it’s desired scope of abortion and makes provisionary exceptions for abortions needed to save the life of the minor involved.

This same legislation was sponsored by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen [R, FL-18] in the 109th congress where it and its companion bill passed both the House and the Senate but never came into law when differences between the two chambers’ versions of the bill could not be reached. An identical bill died after being introduced in the following Congressional session, even while carrying more co-sponsors than the current bill’s count of 120 republican and blue dog democrat supporters. This congressional session’s version of the bill has been shifting committee hands since its introduction in January.

3. H.J.Res.47: Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States giving Congress power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States

Instead of gaining attention in anticipation of this weekend’s symbolic festivities, this self-explanatory legislation has been “cooling down” among OpenCongress voters. What is notable about this declining trend is that it mirrors the corresponding enthusiasm held by House Representatives. While this resolution has attracted 49 co-sponsors, such support is relatively tame in comparison to previous congressional terms.

The first Flag Protection Act was passed by the 90th Congress in 1968 as a response to protests against the Vietnam War. The Supreme Court, however, overturned this decision in the 1989 Texas v. Johnson case by a 5-4 vote, declaring the act as an unconstitutional restriction of public expression. Since then Congress has sought to pass similar legislation every congressional term, always in the form of a constitutional amendment.

Beginning with the 104th Congress, the resolution actually received the two-thirds majority needed to pass in the House of Representatives for five consecutive congressional sessions. Despite this success, flag desecration bills have been attracting fewer and fewer co-sponsors and that of the 110th Congress ultimately died in committee.

Contrastingly the history of this legislation in the upper chamber cannot be characterized with any success or consistency. While these companion resolutions have largely died in committee, S.J.Res.12, one of the fire desecration bills of that term, came short of passing by one vote in the 109th Congress.

Not only are trends among Congress member and OpenCongress user support comparable, debate surrounding these bills also bares similarity to the comments posted on the H.J.Res.47 page. Proponents and opponents generally argue along the dichotomy between protecting a national symbol and protecting free speech.
Indeed this was the tone of Rep.Jo Ann Emerson [R, MO-8], the bill’s sponsor, who stated in a press release that:

The American flag is more than a symbol, especially to the American men and women who have served in uniform, putting their lives at risk for our country with the flag stitched on their sleeves. People who desecrate our flag don’t fully understand, and certainly do not respect, the service of these Americans in defense of our freedoms.

in contrast to Justice Joseph Brennan’s argument against Congress’ 1968 flag protection act stating that

the principal function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute; it may indeed best serve its high purpose when it induces condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger. (Distressed Patriot)

4. H.R.3022: To restore the second amendment rights of all Americans

Lastly, as the house was getting ready to debate the cap and trade bill on Friday, Rep. Ron Paul [R, TX-14] introduced an old favorite. Unambiguously, this bill seeks to repeal previous restrictions on firearms. Similar to H.J.Res.47, this legislation has experienced recent trending on OpenCongress and repeated attention in Congress. Rep. Paul has introduced identical bills to H.R.3022 since his appointment to the 105th Congress in 1997, all of which have attracted progressively fewer co-sponsors and died while in committee.
His reasons for repeatedly supporting and sponsoring legislation against gun control flows from the argument that:

The right to keep and bear arms is a fundamental right and, according to the drafters of the Constitution, the guardian of every other right.

See here, too, for more reflections from Rep. Paul regarding the above-mentioned Flag burning legislation.

Better Budget Numbers for Health Care

2009-07-02T14:15:00Z

Good news for those that support a public health care option. Apparently, when you throw a public option into the health care reform fray, along with a plan to tax large companies that don’t provide health care, the cost of action becomes much less and covers more people.

The Associated Press reports:

Democrats on a key Senate Committee outlined a revised and far less costly health care plan Wednesday night that includes a government-run insurance option and an annual fee on employers who do not offer coverage to their workers.

The plan carries a 10-year price tag of slightly over $600 billion, and would lead toward an estimated 97 percent of all Americans having coverage, according to the Congressional Budget Office, Sens. Edward M. Kennedy and Chris Dodd said in a letter to other members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. The AP obtained a copy.

By contrast, an earlier, incomplete proposal carried a price tag of roughly $1 trillion and would have left millions uninsured, CBO analysts said in mid-June.

The letter indicated the cost and coverage improvements resulted from two changes. The first calls for a government-run health insurance option to compete with private coverage plans, an option that has drawn intense opposition from Republicans.

“We must not settle for legislation that merely gestures at reform,” the two Democrats wrote. “We must deliver on the promise of true change.”

Additionally, the revised proposal calls for a $750 annual fee on employers for each full-time worker not offered coverage through their job. The fee would be set at $375 for part-time workers. Companies with fewer than 25 employees would be exempt. The fee was forecast to generate $52 billion over 10 years, money the government would use to help provide subsidies to those who cannot afford insurance.

The same provision is also estimated to greatly reduce the number of workers whose employers would drop coverage, thus addressing a major concern noted by CBO when it reviewed the earlier proposals.

For more details on the new version of the “HELP” bill, see Wonk Room and The Treatment. Also, Health Care for America Now says that all 13 Democrats on the HELP committee are set to vote in favor of the new version of the bill.

See all the Last-Minute Changes to the Climate Change Bill

2009-07-01T16:11:00Z

Last week when House Democratic leaders decided at the last minute to add several hundred pages of changes to the Waxman-Markley cap-and-trade bill and rush it to the House floor for a vote, the bill’s opponents and some good-government groups raised serious objections to the opacity of the process. Rich Lowry at the National Review wrote, “no one could be sure what he was voting for — not after the 1,200-page bill had a 300-page amendment added at 3:09 a.m. the day of its passage.” And Paul Blumenthal at the Sunlight Foundation, noting that the 300-page amendment was the product of a many behind-the-scenes meetings on the Hill, asked, “what lobbyists were involved in those meetings?”

We may never get the details of the back-room negotiating that took place leading up to the bill’s passage in the House on Friday, but with OpenCongress’s legislative versioning tool we can see exactly what was changed in the bill in the process and then start to figure out why. Just go to the text of the bill as passed by the House and select “Show Changes.” You can scan the entire bill and see, with color-coded text, exactly what was changed – red, stuck-out text denoting changed or removed sections in the bill, and green text denoting sections that were inserted or modified.

I just spent 30 minutes scanning through the bill and its changes, here are a few things that stood out to me.

Transparency of Carbon Offsets

It appears that during the negotiations, language was added to the bill to bring a little more transparency to the carbon offsets program. There’s a lot of skepticism surrounding the carbon offsets idea, so this is significant. Basically, the program would allow polluters to buy an offset or pay someone else to reduce or capture carbon instead of actually reducing their own carbon emissions. If the offsets program isn’t rigorous enough, carbon levels won’t actually be reduced to meet the bill’s carbon targets.

The changes made to the bill would require the administrator of the program to make offset applications and the administrator’s decision to accept or reject the application publicly available. It’s unclear what “publicly available” means for the purposes of this section, but if it’s done properly – posted online in a searchable format – then the prospect of public accountability could help the administrator make responsible decisions that will keep the program on track to reach the bill’s carbon targets. Here’s how the section of the text appears when the recent changes are highlighted with our versioning tool:

‘(d) Approval and Notification- Not later than 90 days after receiving a complete approval petition under subsection (a), the Administrator shall make the approval petition publicly available,
approve or deny the petition in writing and, if the petition is denied, provide the reasons for denial, and make the Administrator’s written decision publicly available. After an offset project is approved, the offset project developer shall not be required to resubmit an approval petition during the offset project’s crediting period, except as provided in section 734(c )(4).

Weaker International Efforts

Part F of the bill, “Ensuring Real Reductions in Industrial Emissions,” has two stated purposes: “to promote a strong global effort to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions” and “to prevent an increase in greenhouse gas emissions in countries other than the United States as a result of direct and indirect compliance costs incurred under this title.”

But a change made to the version of the bill passed by the House appears to weaken the section in what seems to me like a significant way. The original version of the bill, as introduced, stated that it was United States policy to work proactively to establish binding agreements “committing all major greenhouse gas-emitting nations to contribute equitably to the reduction of global greenhouse gas emissions.” But the version passed by the House on Friday removes any mention of setting U.S. policy and instead states that the purpose of the section is to to “induce foreign countries, and, in particular, fast-growing developing countries, to take substantial action with respect to their greenhouse gas emissions.”

Here’s how the portion of text appears when version changes are displayed:

‘SEC. 762. INTERNATIONAL NEGOTIATIONS.‘(a) Finding- Congress finds that the purposes of this part, as set forth in section 761, can be most effectively addressed and achieved through agreements negotiated between the United States and foreign countries.‘(b) Statement of Policy- It is the policy of the United States to work proactively under the United ‘(c ) Purposes of Subpart 2- The purposes of subpart 2 are additionally-

‘(1) to induce foreign countries, and, in particular, fast-growing developing countries, to take substantial action with respect to their greenhouse gas emissions consistent with the Bali Action Plan developed under the United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and in other appropriate forums, to establish binding agreements, including sectoral agreements, committing all major greenhouse gas-emitting nations to contribute equitably to the reduction of global greenhouse gas emissions.‘(c ) Notification of Foreign Countries- Not later than January 1, 2020, the President shall notify foreign countries that an International Reserve Allowance Program, as described in subpart 2, may apply to primary products produced in a foreign country by a sector for which the President has made a determination described in section 767(c ); and
‘(2) to ensure that the measures described in subpart 2 are designed and implemented in a manner consistent with applicable international agreements to which the United States is a party.

Protecting U.S. Intellectual Property in Clean Tech

A provision from the House’s Foreign Relations Authorization bill protecting U.S. intellectual property rights in global climate change treaties was brought to my attention through a Slashdot posting a few weeks ago. The posting quoted Peter Zura’s patent blog noting that the Foreign Authorization vote had come “in anticipation of the upcoming negotiations in December as part of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. … Previously, there was sufficient chatter in international circles on compulsory licenses, IP seizures, and the outright abolition of patents on low-carbon technology, that Congress felt it necessary to clarify the US’s IP position up front.’”

Not surprisingly, a scan through the revised climate change bill as passed by the House shows that similar text was added to it in several spots, particularly in the “”http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h2454/text?version=eh&nid=t0:eh:7104">Exporting Clean Energy" subtitle. Language putting intellectual property considerations at the forefront of clean tech implementation in developing countries was dropped in at the last minute in several sections of the subtitle. Here’s one example:

(b) Purposes- The purposes of this subtitle are-

(1) to provide United States assistance and leverage private resources to encourage widespread implementation, in developing countries, of activities that reduce, sequester, or avoid greenhouse gas emissions; and

(2) to provide such assistance in a manner that-

(A) encourages such countries to adopt policies and measures, including sector-based and cross-sector policies and measures, that substantially reduce, sequester, or avoid greenhouse gas emissions;

~~and(B)~~(B)
promotes the successful negotiation of a global agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change; and

(C ) promotes robust compliance with and enforcement of existing international legal requirements for the protection of intellectual property rights, as formulated in the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights referred to in section 101(d)(15) of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (19 U.S.C. 3511(d)(15)) and in applicable intellectual property provisions of bilateral trade agreements.

These findings are from a quick scan of the bill and they don’t include the most substantial changes to the bill that have been reported already. With more time, I’m sure there is a lot more that can be discovered. I encourage everyone to take a few minutes to scan through the text and see if anything strikes them as particularly interesting and worth more investigation.

To see the last-minute changes that were made to the bill before it was brought to the House floor go here and click the “Show Changes” link. Scroll down until you find some text in red or green; that’s where changes were made. If you scroll over the text, the option to leave a comment or create a permalink will appear. If you find anything, please mark it by leaving a comment and post the permalink in the comments of this post so the rest of us can check it out. Happy digging!

DoD Supercops

2009-06-29T22:25:00Z

We’re seeing a little surge of interest on OpenCongress in a relatively unnoticed piece of pending legislation, H.R. 675. It doesn’t have a short/informal title, but the official summary explains it’s a bill “To amend title 10, United States Code, to provide police officers, criminal investigators, and game law enforcement officers of the Department of Defense with authority to execute warrants, make arrests, and carry firearms.”

All the recent interest in the bill seems to be coming from this post on Infowars:

H.R. 675: Building Obama’s Civilian National Security Force

In January, without any recognizable corporate media coverage, Rep. Bob Filner, a California Democrat, introduced H.R. 675. The bill would amend title 10 of the United States Code and extend to civilian employees of the Department of Defense the authority to execute warrants, make arrests, and carry firearms. The bill was referred to the Armed Services Committee on January 26, 2009.

Filner’s bill would amend the United States code with the following: “Sec. 1585b. Law enforcement officers of the Department of Defense: authority to execute warrants, make arrests, and carry firearms… for any offense against the United States.” (Emphasis added.)

The Posse Comitatus Act, passed on June 18, 1878 after the end of Reconstruction, limits the powers of the federal government to use the military for law enforcement. The Act prohibits members of the federal uniformed services from exercising nominally state law enforcement, police, or peace officer powers that maintain “law and order” on non-federal property within the United States.

H.R. 675 sidesteps Posse Comitatus by defining “law enforcement officer of the Department of Defense” as “a civilian employee of the Department of Defense,” including federal police officers, detectives, criminal investigators, special agents, and game law enforcement officers classified by the Office of Personnel Management Occupational Series 0083 (the United States Office of Personnel Management is described as an “independent agency” of the U.S. government that manages the civil service of the federal government).

The bill hasn’t attracted a single co-sponsor and it hasn’t seen any action in the legislative process.

Cap-and-Trade and Campaign Finance

2009-06-29T20:55:00Z

The Center for Responsive Politics, the people behind the money-in-politics site OpenSecrets, have done an analysis of the House’s vote last Friday passing the Waxman-Markley climate change bill. Based on campaign contribution data going back 20 years, here’s what they found:

Across the board, the industries that have opposed climate change legislation have given more money to the members of the House of Representatives who voted against the sweeping bill than to those who helped pass it. The energy sector overall, for example, gave twice the amount of contributions, on average, to those who voted against the legislation than to those who supported it ($274,000 compared to $124,200).

Their report points out that environmental groups, over the same period, gave only $21,198 to members of Congress that voted in favor of the bill, and only $3,088 to those that voted against it. So, both the energy companies and the environmentalists gave much more to the members that ended up voting their way. But, even though the environmental groups gave less than 20 percent of what the energy companies gave, their position ended up winning out.

Preview of OpenCongress Redesign

2009-06-29T19:12:00Z

Today, at the Personal Democracy Forum conference, OpenCongress is announcing our biggest update yet, coming this summer: a complete site re-design, more data on “the money trail” in Congress, and new tools to engage with your elected officials. Everyone can be an insider.

Currently, OpenCongress works as a hub of conversation about bills and issues in Congress, but the upcoming redesign will make the site a more powerful organizing platform. If OpenCongress were a software project, we’d call it version 2.0, and we’re excited to get it out into the world.

Here are some screenshot previews of the redesign, along with quick ways for you to give your feedback and help spread the word. First, to the right, check out the new OC homepage in progress — click the image once to see it in full in a new browser window and again to enlarge:

… so fresh & so clean, the redesign improves the readability & usability of all the government data & social wisdom on our pages. We’re continually working toward the point where, instead of feeling overwhelmed or intimidated by government data, newcomers to politics feel more informed and empowered in the face of the legislative process.

Congress w/ Social Context

Second, our bill page interface has been redesigned with one of the primary aims being to foreground the interactive tools:

… the new right-hand sidebar presents easy access to tracking and voting features, built-in social sharing, and now, as below, the ability to write your elected officials directly from bill pages with your opinion on the bill:

… scrolling down back on this draft bill page, we’ve brought out and highlighted the social data on “Users Tracking This Bill” — what other bills and Members people are tracking, supporting, and opposing. This data, uniquely generated by the OpenCongress community, works like a “Six Degrees of OpenCongress” — find other topics of likely interest to you in the Congressional haystack, based on the associations of real people.

Watchdog Congress

Third, we’re especially excited to announce a new set of “Watchdog” features called as part of every free “My OpenCongress” profile:

… on your “Watchdog” tab, you can easily view your Senators’ and Representative’s latest actions, and compare your personal votes “aye/nay” on bills with their official votes on those bills’ passage. Watchdog tabs are accompanied by state- and Congressional district-specific portals to find your elected officials and what other users in your state are tracking, supporting, and opposing. These are significant steps towards our goal of taking OpenCongress more local and facilitating peer-to-peer constituent communication about the votes that matter to you.

More $$ Data

Fourth, we’re integrating more campaign contribution data to help the public follow “The Money Trail” throughout Congress. For Members of Congress, the redesigned site will show new levels of detail from OpenSecrets on which industries have donated to their campaigns. For bills, we’re now syndicating more info from MAPLight on interests that support and oppose the bill (e.g., the recent Climate Change Bill [H.R. 2454]). These are significant additions in making OpenCongress a more useful tool for combating corruption and building broad-based accountability.

Fifth, as part of the redesign launch we’ll be releasing the OpenCongress API, currently in beta. In short, the API provides web developers with automated access to all the data on OpenCongress in order to remix it for their own websites & online communities. In addition to official legislative data, the API offers a wealth of one-of-a-kind social data: bills most in the news & blogs, what’s popular in the Battle Royale, users tracking this bill are also tracking these bills, summaries of hot bills, and much more.

Wiki Knowledge

Sixth and last, the redesign will feature enhanced access to the shockingly useful content available on the OpenCongress Wiki — especially RaceTracker, the community project tracking every election for the U.S. House, the U.S. Senate, and governorship. This crowd-sourced project allows individuals to add information they know about who’s running for office in their district and state, as long as the info is referenced to an outside source. The result is a collaborative, non-partisan, rich web resource on everyone running for Congress in 2010 and beyond. The OC Wiki will also release a new project giving enhanced access to Congressional scorecards from issue-based organizations from a variety of backgrounds. On pages for Members of Congress, you’ll have over 30 scorecards at your fingertips with meaningful votes on important issues, as well as the ability to access all this structured data through semantic MediaWiki. For example, visit the wiki profile of Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY) & do a ‘find’ on “Congressional scorecards”.

Help Us Out!

Overall, by making our site more social and interactive, we’re working to make Congress more transparent and accountable. We’re interested in your feedback – to volunteer as a beta-tester and how the new features work for you, simply email us at w/ subject line “redesign”. In the weeks to come we’ll email you a preview link with further instructions on how to help. In the meantime, please help spread the word about our upcoming redesign — short link to Tweet, Digg post to Digg, or simply email this blog post to your friends. As always, OpenCongress is a 100% free, open-source, non-partisan, and not-for-profit joint project of Sunlight Foundation and the Participatory Politics Foundation. Can’t wait to see how individuals and organizations use the new site to get involved in the Congressional process. Thanks for using OpenCongress.

Cap and Trade in the Senate

2009-06-29T17:02:00Z

Now that the Waxman-Markley climate change bill is out of the House, everyone wants to know what’s going to happen with it in the Senate. There are a handful of reports today on the bill’s Senate prospects form the big news agencies. The best one comes from Darren Samuelsohn of Greenwire, published by the New York Times.

It’s a good article, and fairly comprehensive, but at this point nobody has any idea what’s going to happen. The Senate’s version of the bill has even been written yet. As the article explains, it’s definitely going to be a tough fight to get the 60 votes that will be needed for it to pass. There are a lot of moving parts. Between pro-nuclear Republicans, rust-belt moderates, global warming deniers, and committed environmentalists, the Senate might be able to find a sweet spot and pass a bill that includes a cap-and-trade plan, but it’s also easy to imagine the whole thing breaking down.

Looks possible:

According to an E&E analysis of the Senate, 60 votes is within reach for a cap-and-trade climate bill, but many concessions must be made to get the measure across the goal line.

To start, there are 45 senators in the “yes” or “probably yes” camp, including Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Maine Republicans Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe.

There are 23 fence sitters. Alaska’s Mark Begich (D) and Lisa Murkowski® need to keep their home state’s oil and gas interests in mind, while Ohio’s Sherrod Brown (D) and Michigan Democrats Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow are pressing for provisions that help agriculture and their state’s ailing manufacturing and auto industries.

There are also 32 Republicans who are unlikely to vote for a climate bill of the shape and size that Obama and congressional Democratic leaders envision, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Missouri Sen. Kit Bond and Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe, an outspoken skeptic about the link between man-made greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.

Republicans and conservative Democrats make it sound impossible:

“I think you have to think what the impact is at home,” Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) said earlier this month. "Certainly, I want to support the president when I can. But I can’t when I can’t.

It is unclear where Obama might do the most good. A day after last November’s election, President-elect Obama talked about climate change during a meeting in Chicago with his Republican rival from the presidential race, McCain, and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).

In an interview earlier this month, McCain, who twice forced Senate floor votes on cap-and-trade legislation during the Bush years, said he had not heard from Obama on climate change since last November.

“I don’t think it’s possible,” McCain said. “It’s total disarray. There’s no bipartisanship, there’s no consensus.”

Asked how Obama could win his vote on climate change, McCain replied, “Sit down and negotiate seriously. We’ve had none of that.”

Graham said he would support climate legislation so long as it includes less aggressive emission targets and greater incentives for nuclear power and offshore oil and natural gas development.

“The bottom line, if you want to get 60 votes, you’re going to have to broaden this beyond cap and trade,” Graham said.

Maybe?:

Yet there is plenty of reason to think a deal remains possible this year in the Senate on the climate bill.

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), a close friend of Obama’s who has remained on the fence on climate legislation, said the global warming debate will fit in well with the president’s overall agenda.

“I think there’s more likely to be compromises this year, because everyone understands the economy is in such a fragile condition that you don’t want to pass anything that’s going to do any kind of have the opposite impact that we’re trying to have on the stimulus,” she said. “We don’t want to work against ourselves here in terms of job creation.”

This bill passed through the House, where Democrats hold a 78-seat majority, with just one vote to spare. Jay Cost takes a look at what we can learn about the Senate prospects from the House roll call.

Another good place to look for clues on the Senate is the vote they took on a cap-and-trade bill last year. That bill had slightly lower goals for reducing carbon emissions and contained fewer provisions outside of the cap-and-trade mechanism. You can see the details on that vote here. Seven Republicans voted for that bill, though only three of them are still in the Senate this session. On the other hand, four Democrats voted against the bill, all of whom are still in the Senate.

Morning Reading

2009-06-29T06:18:00Z

Here’s what I’m reading this morning on the train heading to the Personal Democracy Forum in NYC

Climate Plan Faces Challenge After Narrow U.S. House Victory (Bloomberg).

Obama Wary of Tariff Provision (WSJ).

Betraying the Planet (Krugman).

Congress Takes on Mountaintop Mining (Washington Independent).

Democrats Present Hurdles for Obama (WSJ).

Small businesses wary of health care legislation (USA Today

Recovery threatened by toxic assets still hidden in key banks (Guardian).

Honduran President is ousted in Coup (NYT).

How They Voted on the Cap-and-Trade Bill

2009-06-27T14:12:00Z

As we reported last night, just before heading home for Independence Day recess and after a particularly tough floor debate, the House of Representatives passed the Waxman-Markey climate change bill (H.R. 2454) by a nail-biter vote of 219-212. Two-hundred and eighteen votes were needed to pass the bill.

Though they have tried in the past, this is the first time either chamber of Congress has been successful in passing a bill designed to address climate change. The bill’s central provision is a cap-and-trade mechanism, which would establish a gradually-tightening economy-wide cap on how much carbon can be produced and allocate carbon credits that energy companies and other polluters can buy and sell on an open market.

“This legislation will finally make clean energy the profitable kind of energy,” President Obama said after the vote. “That will lead to the creation of new businesses and entire new industries. And that will lead to American jobs that pay well and cannot be outsourced.” The President said that he is looking forward to the debate over the legislation in the Senate and seeing it reach his desk “so that we can say, at long last, that this was the moment when we decided to confront America’s energy challenge and reclaim America’s future.”

We’ll be covering the bill’s prospects as it moves into the Senate and highlighting key issues and critical senators as they develop. But for now, I want to take a closer look at the House’s vote on the bill yesterday. Below are complete lists of all the Representatives that voted against their party leadership on passing the bill and on the Republican substitute amendment. If they are not in the lists below, they voted with their party leadership (Democrats for the bill, Republicans against it) on both votes.

On Passage

You can view the full vote breakdown details at this link. Below are the 44 Democrats who voted against their party leadership and President Obama by voting “nay” on the bill, and the 8 Republicans that vote against their party but with Obama to help pass it. A full 29 of the Democrats who voted against the bill are members of the conservative Blue Dog Democrats. Because of how tight the vote was and the number of Democratic defections, the handful of Republicans who voted in favor of the bill basically gave the bill the final boost it needed to passed.

Democrats That Voted ‘Nay’

Republicans That Voted ‘Aye’

On the Republican Substitute Amendment

Besides the vote on passage, the only other substantial vote the House placed on the climate change bill was on a Republican amendment that would have replaced the entirety of the bill with the text of H.R. 513, entitled the “New Manhattan Project for Energy Independence.” The amendment would have set non-binding energy independence goals and awarded cash prizes to companies that develop new technologies for improving automobile fuel efficiency, solar power, biofuels, carbon capture and nuclear-derived electricity. The full roll call details can be seen at this link. Below are the 7 Democrats who voted for replacing the Waxman-Markely bill with the Republicans alternative and the 11 Democrats who voted to keep the Waxman-Markley bill text the way it is.

The most noteworthy vote here is probably Rep. Waters’. Unlike the other Democrats who supported the Republican amendment, she is generally progressive on most issues.

Democrats That Voted ‘Aye’

Republicans That Voted ‘Nay’

To keep up with the latest om the cap-and-trade bill as it moves into the Senate, subscribe to the RSS feed for this blog (blog homepage) and our various feeds for the bill istelf – Recent Actions, news coverage and blog coverage.

Congress Links

2009-06-27T00:32:00Z

The big news tonight is that the House has officially approved their landmark climate change bill. We’ll have more on that over the weekend and next week. For now, here are some links on what’s happening in Congress:

Cap-and-trade bill costs, state-by-state (538).

Rep. Broun calls global warming a hoax on the House floor, gets applause (Think Progress).

Kucinich’s take: "passing a weak bill today gives us weak environmental policy tomorrow (Rep. Kucinich).

Sen. Rockefeller’s strong argument for a public health care option (Washington Monthly).

Specter flips, now says there should be a public healt hcare option (TPM DC).

Sen. Kerry suggests a 10-year public option trigger (HuffPo).

Great post speculating on the White House’s health care strategy (Ezra Klein).

Health care reform has found its Senate gang (Politico).

Have a link to share? Send it to us here.