(Cross-posted from Congresspedia, The citizen’s encyclopedia on Congress.)

Senators and representatives return to work today following a two-week recess to once again find the struggling economy dictating their schedules. The mortgage crisis is continuing, and home foreclosures are on the rise. In addition, cities across the country are bracing for an oversupply of housing units as construction of new homes and condos—began while the housing bubble was at its peak—is completed. Meanwhile, taxpayers are waiting for rebate checks that were part of a stimulus package (on OpenCongress) approved last month.

In the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid wants to vote on a second stimulus package meant to relieve pressure on the housing market and on homeowners. Under the Senate measure, municipalities would share $4 billion in grants for the restoration of foreclosed homes. The bill would also provide $200 million for loan counselors, and would amend bankruptcy law to allow judges to modify mortgages for individuals on the verge of bankruptcy.

The bankruptcy provision is a bitter pill for the banking industry, which has lobbied for its removal from the legislation. In addition, Senate Republicans are striving to insert their own amendments: a limit on plaintiff attorneys’ fees and an extension of President George W. Bush’s 2001 tax cuts.

While there’s plenty to get done on the economic front, Congress will also take up legislation regarding the Iraq war in April. House leaders are drafting an “emergency” supplemental spending bill to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, since Pentagon officials have refused to include the wars in their normal budget requests. Democrats are saddling the legislation with a slew of domestic priorities, hoping to force tough votes for GOP members.

In other Iraq news, General David Patraeus will testify before several Congressional committees next week. Patraeus is expected to give a progress report on the situation in Iraq, and Ambassador Ryan Crocker is also scheduled to give testimony.

President Bush has also weighed in on the Congressional calendar, asking Congress to take action on a number of his priorities. Bush, who departed for a NATO summit in Europe today, said the legislative branch should adopt a reform of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, approve a free trade agreement with Colombia, and change the Federal Housing Authority to help more homeowners.

The FISA reform bill, the RESTORE Act, is something we’ve mentioned quite often in the past. While checking on the differences between the House and Senate version, I came across this great RESTORE Act summary over at Think Progress—it basically describes the House version of the bill.

Aside from the question of immunity for telephone companies (who helped the Bush administration eavesdrop on Americans’ phone conversations without a warrant), the House would place greater oversight on the nation’s electronic surveillance activities and require that agencies obtain warrants prior to conducting surveillance (though the requirement could be obtained after-the-fact in an emergency).

Congressional Democrats will likely stall progress on a Colombian trade pact until President Bush agrees to move forward on Trade Adjustment Assistance for displaced workers.

Nighttime pic of cherry blossoms and Capitol building by aakaak, used under a Creative Commons license.

(Updated below)

In a surprise move, the Senate today came together and agreed to work on passing a bipartisan foreclosure prevention bill. But such a bill has yet to be written — the task has been given to Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-CT) and the Committee’s ranking Republican, Richard Shelby (AL). They’ll be drafting the bill tonight and plan to have it on the Senate floor by noontime tomorrow.

The most contentious issue they will have to iron out is a Democrat-favored measure to allow bankruptcy judges to modify the terms of mortgages for homeowners who are facing foreclosure. Republicans call this measure a “cram down,” and argue that it would increase interest rates by lowering investors’ confidence that they would be assured of their rate of return on a loan. MarketWatch is reporting a tip from Stanford Group analyst Jaret Seiberg, that a bankruptcy provision offered by Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) will likely serve as the backbone for an initial Dodd-Shelby agreement on the issue:

>Under the Frank bill, lenders would reduce the principal of the mortgages to take account the new lower value of the home. The borrower would get a fixed rate loan from the Federal Housing Authority. In return, the government would get a small stake in the home.
>
>The program would be capped at $300 billion.

Arlen Specter (R-PA) also has an alternative bankruptcy proposal that is likely to come up as a floor amendment when the bill is debated, and it very well may find enough support to pass. His proposal has been introduced in the Senate as an alternative to the Democrats’ bankruptcy proposal. Here’s part of an older article from The Hill that explains the ways the Specter bill differs:

>The Specter bill would grant more modest powers to bankruptcy judges to help borrowers stave off foreclosure. It would also apply to a smaller pool of borrowers: homeowners whose mortgages were issued prior to Sept. 26, 2007, who seek relief in the next seven years.
>
>According to Durbin, the biggest sticking point in his discussions with Specter is the leeway given to bankruptcy judges to work out better payment schedules for borrowers. Under the Specter legislation, lenders would be able to veto any new terms.

And the Associated Press this afternoon gives a rundown of some other parts of the leading Democratic foreclosure prevention bill that may be included in the Shelby-Dodd bill:

>The legislation is likely to draw on elements of the Democratic plan such as letting states issue $10 billion in tax-exempt bonds to refinance subprime loans and permitting homebuilders and other money-losing businesses to reclaim previously paid taxes.
>
>Democrats also want to provide $4 billion to states to buy up and refurbish foreclosed homes, a plan that the administration opposes as a bailout for lenders and speculators.
>
>The upcoming bill also is sure to attract a GOP amendment by Sen. Johnny Isackson of Georgia to award $15,000 tax credits to people who buy and move into foreclosed homes. That would sharply boost demand, Isackson says. Lawmakers in both parties support the idea
>
>The measure is also likely to include a plan by Dodd to have the Federal Housing Administration guarantee hundreds of billions of dollars worth of refinanced loans if lenders reduce loan amounts to reflect reduced home values. The measure would force banks to make less money on the loans but would also reduce their credit exposure.

Some of these provisions, particularly the $4 billion in Community Development Block Grants for states to fix up foreclosed homes, seem like bargaining chips. We’ll keep you posted as the bill continues to shape up.

UPDATE:

The Tuesday morning edition of CongressDaily has the latest scoop on how the two most contentious provisions — the change in bankruptcy law and the the FHA mortgage insurance program — will figure into the bill. Since it’s a subscription only source, here it is, copied and pasted:

>The package is not expected to include a measure sponsored by Majority Whip Durbin that would change bankruptcy law for owner-occupied homes in foreclosure, giving judges more leeway to change the terms for the mortgage.
>
>Under the Durbin measure, if a homeowner owed $200,000 on a house now valued at $150,000, the judge could write off the $50,000 difference as secured debt that the lender could not recover.
>
>Banks contend the Durbin provision would raise the cost of mortgages because investors would be unsure whether they would be able to generate revenues on loans that they financed. It is likely to be voted on as a standalone amendment.
>
>The major question is over whether floor amendments will need a simple up-or-down vote for adoption or a filibuster-proof 60 votes, which would make adoption of the Durbin amendment unlikely.
>
>Republicans are pushing for a 60-vote threshold to ensure that the Dodd-Shelby substitute could not be tinkered with before a final vote.
>
>If the Durbin amendment fails, the Senate is likely to approve a competing measure by Judiciary ranking member Arlen Specter that would allow a judge to readjust interest rates and waive prepayment penalties, but not restructure the principal of loan. Banks have less opposition to the Specter measure.
>
>The negotiations also might involve a final deal over the FHA mortgage insurance program. The House and Senate have both passed their respective measures, but negotiations have been stalled over how much to raise loan limits.
>
>In the beginning of the year, FHA loan limits were set at $362,000. But the economic stimulus package raised the cap to $625,500. In addition, limits in some high-cost areas were allowed to increase to almost $730,000 under the bill.
>
>House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank has been a proponent of raising the cap, especially in high-cost areas such as California and Massachusetts. Shelby opposes such a large increase, saying “it only affects a few people.”
>
>Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla., suggested Tuesday that both parties split the difference and set the limit at $500,000.
>
>"If we could do that [it] would be good," Shelby said of the FHA bill. “If we can’t, then we are in a conference on that.”

Now’s the time to call your senator to tell them what bankruptcy provision — if any — you want in the bill, and where you want the FHA loan limit cap set.

The Senate’s new, bipartisan housing stimulus package is a major piece of legislation, but it isn’t a bill per se. During the debate, it will be in the form of an amendment to a House-passed energy bill. But that doesn’t mean it has no home on OpenCongress. We’ve created an OpenCongress bill page for the housing package where you can learn the details of the proposal, check out what’s being said about it in the news and blogs and leave your thoughts in the comments section.

We’ll be manually posting relevant news articles and blog posts to the page, but we won’t be able to get them all. If you find an article about the housing package that we don’t have, post a link to it in the comments.

(cross-posted from SENATUS)

A quick update on the progress being made (or should be say not being made) on the Housing Bill. We’ve blogged about a provision, sponsored by Majority Whip Durbin (D-IL), that would allow bankruptcy court judges to modify the terms and principal amounts due on loan agreements for those being foreclosed upon for several weeks now. That single provision is now threatening to completely halt all action on the bipartisan Housing package currently before the Senate.

Senate members are essentially at a standstill for now over forcing this provision, now being offered as an amendment to the Housing Bill, to be subject to a supermajority (60 votes) for adoption. Majority Leader Reid (D-NV) said moments ago that “we will not agree to a 60 vote margin.” He says that if 60 votes were allowed on this amendment, the same could be requested on any amendment to the bill in the future.

Republican members are equally as unwilling to budge on their request for a 60 vote threshold. Minority Leader McConnell (R-KY) referred to this as “somewhat of a manufactured controversy” saying that it should be no surprise that his party would seek a supermajority on this amendment because it has previously been the most controversial provision offered under the Housing legislation. That is certainly the case considering that the bankruptcy judge provision was almost solely responsible for the Senate voting against a move to begin debate on the Housing Bill in February.

Update: In a move likely reflecting the amount of pressure being put on the Senate to take some type of action on Housing legislation, Senator Durbin (D-IL) moved to table his own amendment. That motion was just passed in the Senate by a vote of 58 (Y) to 36 (N). This means that the bankruptcy court judge provision will not be added to the Housing package, allowing amendment offering to continue and, eventually, votes to occur. The Majority Leader called this move an “act of unselfishness.”

As the full Senate begins to move forward with their bipartisan housing bill, in the background, a Senate committee is preparing a proposal to allow bankruptcy judges to revamp mortgages, which was dropped from the bill, so that it can come back separately to the Senate floor later.

via subscription-only CongressDaily:

>The Senate Judiciary Committee voted along party lines today to approve legislation sponsored by Senate Majority Whip Durbin [pictured above] that would let bankruptcy judges retool the mortgage terms of subprime borrowers in danger of losing their homes. The bill, which cleared the panel 10-9, would authorize judges not only to roll back or delay interest rate resets in bankruptcy proceedings but reduce loan principals to levels determined to be a home’s current values. The measure was excluded from the overall housing package now on the Senate floor because it is opposed by the lending industry.

For more on Durbin’s bankruptcy proposal, see this point-by-point rundown from a press release.

A competing and somewhat weaker bankruptcy proposal was rejected by the committee. According to a member of Arlen Specter’s (R-PA) staff, it will now be offered as an amendment to the housing bill currently before the Senate:

>The committee rejected, in another party-line 10-9 vote, a measure offered by Senate Judiciary ranking member Arlen Specter that would have allowed for the interest rate resets and other relief but would have permitted reductions only when the lenders agreed to them. Specter argued that a unilateral scale-down of mortgages by judges could lead to lenders pulling out of the market if “we meddle with the principal sums.”
>
>Democrats argued that the Specter amendment would gut the Durbin bill. “It would basically take away what the bill is trying to do,” said Sen. Benjamin Cardin, D-Md. Durbin, who did not attend the markup because he was presiding over the housing bill debate, has repeatedly insisted that his reduction or “cramdown” language is essential.

There’s a new jobs report (pdf) out today, and it’s not good:

>US employers cut payrolls by a bigger-than-expected 80,000 in March, adding more evidence that a housing downturn and credit crisis have pushed the economy into a recession.
>
>It was the third monthly decline in a row and the biggest in five years, according to the Labor Department.
>
>Adding to the bleak picture, the department revised the first two months of the year’s job losses to a total of 152,000 from a previous estimate of 85,000.
>
>The March unemployment rate jumped to 5.1 percent from 4.8 percent, the highest since a matching rate in September 2005.
>[…]
>Economists polled ahead of the report forecast a decline of 60,000 in non-farm payrolls and a rise in the unemployment rate to 5 percent.

And an even more disturbing job trend is emerging when you look at just the private sector. The new data shows that, in March, 98,000 private sector jobs disappeared, marking the fourth consecutive month of private-sector losses.

For the past few months, the most active part of OpenCongress, by far, has been the comments section of S.2544, the Emergency Unemployment Compensation Extension Act of 2008. The bill would provide for 20 more weeks of unemployment insurance benefits for unemployed people whose benefits expired with the last year.

There are well over 1,000 comments on the page — people telling their personal stories of struggling with unemployment, as well as vigorous efforts to organize and push the bill into the media’s attention and to get the Senate to pass it. The page has become an impromptu petition, with people from across the country sending it to their members of Congress to show them how bad the unemployment problem is.

Today’s jobs report may have tipped the scales a little closer towards the bill being passed. In response to the report, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and other congressional leaders have begun a serious push for a second stimulus bill, which would almost definitely contain the unemployment insurance extension:

>“When congressional leaders meet with the President next week, I will urge him to refocus his attention on America’s economy and to again work in a bipartisan manner on a new stimulus package. We need to work together to restore consumer and market confidence, to assist millions of Americans threatened with the loss of their homes, and to help families meet the rising costs of necessities"
>
>House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel, D-Illinois, said, “We need an economic program that rebuilds America and offers real help to the middle class. The Democratic Congress will now begin work on a second stimulus package to help American families and get our economy back on track.”
>
>A Democratic leadership aide says House leaders have been discussing the need for another stimulus, but have not reached any decisions on what they want included in it. Some measures likely to be considered include funding for infrastructure projects, unemployment assistance, and food stamps.

The property tax deduction for people who don’t itemize that is part of the Senate’s bipartisan housing bill has been criticized as being pretty irrelevant to the issues the bill was supposed to address. But there may also be another reason for Congress to take a closer look at it before they finish up the bill. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities has drawn the red flag on a little-known provision that, when combined with the new deduction, they say “could force many localities to cut police, schools, and other vital public services.”

The bill stipulates that that new deduction will not be available to “any resident of a locality that raises its property tax rate between April 2 and next January 1.” CBPP is concerned that the new deduction this bill is promising homeowners — $500 for single filers and $1,000 for joint filers — could strengthen the already-strong opposition to raising local property taxes, since agreeing to a tax increase would mean losing the individual tax deductions. And since a lot of tows and cities are going through hard times financially, if they aren’t able to raise property taxes, they may have to cut back on the services they provide to the community.

CBPP’s got other problems with this provision too. Here are the main points from their analysis:

>* Property taxes support vital services such as police and fire departments and are a major funding source for schools in most states. In the areas hardest hit by the housing crisis, property values — and thus property tax revenues — are falling. If they do not have the flexibility to offset even a portion of this revenue loss by raising property tax rates, they will have to cut police forces, close fire stations, and potentially lay off teachers or take other drastic action to cut K-12 education.
>
>* This proposal would also undercut localities’ efforts to deal with extra burdens that foreclosures have placed on them, such as policing areas with abandoned housing, assisting families that have lost their homes, and housing the newly homeless.
>
>* If the federal government precludes localities from offsetting their lost property tax revenues, states will face pressure to make up the revenue. But more than half of the states already face deficits that average 9 percent of their expenditures. Thus, this proposal would squeeze state and local services from both ends.
>
>* The federal government should not pre-empt local governments’ taxing power. In our system of federalism, states — not the federal government — grant taxing power to localities. If the federal government decides to create a new tax break, it should do so without pre-empting local rights.
>
>* The proposal is unworkable. At least 40,000 different towns, counties, and school districts levy property taxes; their boundaries overlap in some states and do not correspond to any other boundary measures, such as zip codes. For each taxpayer seeking the proposed deduction, the IRS would have to determine whether the jurisdiction(s) in which the taxpayer resides had complied with the freeze on property taxes. Because there is no central repository of current data on property tax rates, that would be an impossible task for the IRS to perform.

As far as I can tell, there has not been an amendment introduced in the Senate to address these concerns. The bill will have to be reconciled with the House before it is sent to President Bush to be signed into law. We’ll keep you posted on how things are shaping up around this provision.

Pictured above are the two main architects behind the bill, Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Richard Shelby (R-AL)

There’s a battle happening behind the scenes between Democrats and Republicans in the House over who owns the upper hand on immigration legislation. Republicans this week are calling for a “full court press” to get the support of a handful of on-the-fence Democrats so that they can force a vote on an immigration enforcement bill, the SAVE Act. Meanwhile, Democrats are trying to push forward with creating their own compromise proposal, which would likely include a patch to citizenship program.

The SAVE Act is designed to curb illegal immigration by beefing up border security personnel and by making it more difficult for illegal immigrants to find work in the U.S. One of its most controversial provisions would make E-Verify, a voluntary government program that lets employers verify the employment eligibility status of their employees, to become mandatory over the next four years. For a thorough overview of the bill, see this press release (pdf).

Thelma Drake (D-VA) is trying to force the bill out of committee and onto the House floor for a vote through using a parliamentary tactic known as a discharge petition. In order for the petition to be successful, she needs to get the signatures of 218 representatives. Currently 185 have signed on.

The SAVE Act has 49 Democrats as co-sponsors, many of whom came to the bill to seek coverage from the political fallout of the Senate’s disastrous immigration debate last Spring. The discharge petition puts them between a rock and a hard place — if they sign it, they disenfranchise the majority of their Democratic constituents; if they don’t, Republicans will call them out on their inconsistency as a lack of commitment to immigration enforcement.

According to insider news source CongressDaily ($), “House Democrats are concerned that another 10 rank-and-file lawmakers, likely ”http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Blue_Dog_Coalition">Blue Dog Coalition members, will sign the petition. With that, Republicans could easily round up the few in their party who have not signed on and ensure that the measure comes to the floor."

Below is a list of all the Blue Dog Democrats who are co-sponsors of the SAVE Act, but haven’t (yet) signed the discharge petition. How the current Congress addresses immigration now lays largely in their hands — if your Rep. is on the list, you may want to call them and tell them where you stand:

Rep. Michael Arcuri [D, NY-24]

Rep. Melissa Bean [D, IL-8]

Rep. Robert Berry [D, AR-1]

Rep. Sanford Bishop [D, GA-2]

Rep. Dan Boren [D, OK-2]

Rep. Leonard Boswell [D, IA-3]

Rep. F. Allen Boyd [D, FL-2]

Rep. Jim Cooper [D, TN-5]

Rep. Robert Cramer [D, AL-5]

Rep. Lincoln Davis [D, TN-4]

Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand [D, NY-20]

Rep. Baron Hill [D, IN-9]

Rep. Tim Holden [D, PA-17]

Rep. James Marshall [D, GA-8]

Rep. Jim Matheson [D, UT-2]

Rep. Charles Melancon [D, LA-3]

Rep. Patrick Murphy [D, PA-8]

Rep. Mike Ross [D, AR-4]

Rep. John Tanner [D, TN-8]

The House of Representatives is acting quickly to finish the Senate’s Housing Stimulus bill. On Wednesday the House Ways and Means Committee approved their version of the bill, the Housing Assistance Tax Act of 2008, by a bipartisan vote of 35-5. Some of its proposals for helping struggling homeowners and the housing market in general are similar to what the Senate’s approve in their bill. But unlike the Senate bill, the House’s new bill includes a way for the government to raise enough money to offset the entire cost of what it provides.

Here’s a quick rundown of what this bill from the House would provide:

• A tax credit for first time home buyers equal to 10 percent of the price of a home up to $7,500. The credit would have to be paid back to the government over 15 years in equal installments. It would be available for one year from the date the bill is enacted.

• An extension of standard property tax deductions – $350 for single filers and $700 for joint filers – in 2008 for the estimated 28 million homeowners who do not itemize on their taxes. (The Senate’s bill contains a similar provision, but would provide slightly more – $500 for single filers and $1,000 for joint filers.)

• An increase in the amount of Federal low-income housing tax credits that may be given out by each state in 2008 and 2009. Currently, the limit is set at $2.00 for each person residing in the state. This bill would increase that limit by an additional 20 cents for each person
  residing in the state.

• A $10 billion increase in the amount of tax-exempt mortgage revenue bonds that state housing agencies can use to refinance subprime mortgages, make loans to first-time buyers and for the construction of low-income rental housing. This would apply only for 2008 and mirrors a provision in the Senate bill.

• Simplification of some technical rules relating to tax-exempt housing bonds that states use to finance the building of low-income housing projects. (Try as I may, I don’t really understand this part. Can anyone explain in the comments?)

And to make back the money that would be spent on the above proposals:

• A Bush administration proposal to require brokers to report to the IRS the cost basis for transactions involving publicly traded securities (i.e. stocks, mutual funds, bonds). The thinking behind this is that requiring brokers to maintain records of these transactions to report to the IRS would boost compliance with capital gains reporting, and thus tax collection. This is estimated to raise $8.05 billion over 10 years.

• A one-year delay in the implementation of a new, liberalized rule for allocating interest between U.S. sources and foreign sources for purposes of determining a taxpayer’s foreign tax credit limitation. Delaying this new rule is estimated to raise $2.93 billion over 10 years.

This bill will now move to a vote by the full House. It’s expected to pass pretty easily, and once it does, it will have to be reconciled with the Senate’s version before going to President Bush to be signed into law. We’ll keep you posted.

UPDATE: The rule change discussed below was approved, largely along party lines.

House Democrats have found a clever way to regain control of the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement that President Bush is trying to fast-track into law without the usual process of congressional consultation. They are trying to pass a bill to change the law that gives the President any authority on the issue in the first place.

Because of the Free Trade The Fast Track law, Congress is required to act on the U.S.-Colombia trade pact within 90 legislative days of when it was submitted to Congress. The Bush administration officially had the agreement introduced into Congress on April 8th in order to ensure that it is dealt with before Congress disbands for the year. Many Democrats, however, oppose the deal, citing human rights violations by the Colombian government.

Today the House will attempt a vote to change the Administration’s fast-track authority on this bill, giving Congress control of when and if they bring it up for a vote. Majority Whip James Clyburn’s (D-SC) Daily Whipline explains why they are doing it and how it will work:

>This flexibility is necessary to create time for there to be bipartisan negotiations on measures to strengthen the American economy and help American workers first. The worsening economic downturn, as evidenced by the jobless numbers on Friday and the statements by Fed Chairman Bernanke and now as recently as yesterday, former Fed Chairman Greenspan, requires that the top priority for this Congress is to get our economy back on track. Through bipartisan negotiations and action on the American economy, we can create the conditions and opportunity for the Colombia Free Trade deal to pass.
>
>This change is necessitated by the President’s partisan actions. Instead of working with Congress on the economic concerns of the American people, on Tuesday, the President took the unprecedented step of sending up the Colombia Trade deal without following established protocols of Congressional consultation. His actions were political and counter-productive, jeopardizing prospects for its passage.
>
>This rule would remove the fast-track timeline for the Colombia free-trade agreement — simply returning to Congress the rightful constitutional role in scheduling consideration of measures. The Fast Track law (PL 107-210) expressly recognizes “the constitutional right of either House to change the rules (so far as relating to the procedures of that House) at any time, in the same manner, and to the same extent as any other rule of that House” and that is what we are doing.

The New York Times has a great article on some of the politics involved in the Democrats’ linking of the free trade bill with the economic issues currently plaguing the U.S. According to the article, part of the reason Democrats are trying to regain control of the FTA agreement is that they may be able to use it as a bargaining chip down the road as they consider an Iraq supplemental funding bill. Democrats are hoping to attach some domestic spending measures – an extension of food stamp and unemployment benefits – to the supplemental bill. In their previous attempts to enact these measures, the administration, backed by congressional Republicans, were able to put up a successful blockade.

UPDATE 2: David Sirota provides some evidence that today’s move to delay a vote on the U.S.-Colombia FTA wasn’t because House Democrats oppose it, but because they are afraid that if it came to a vote soon, It wouldn’t have enough support to pass.

For months, Congress has been trying to reach some kind of agreement on what should be included in the Farm Bill and how it should be payed for. The bill, which is designed to extend all kinds of agricultural programs at a cost of $286 billion over five years, is about 6 months behind schedule. But a bipartisan group of senators and representatives is meeting this week to iron out the issues that have stalled the bill, and they hope to have an agreement by Friday. The negotiations have boiled down to disagreement over a proposed permanent disaster relief program for farmers suffering from weather-related crop damages.

Right now disaster relief for farmers is approved by Congress on an ad hoc basis, meaning that sometimes the money doesn’t get to the farmers until two or three years after the lost their crops. Lawmakers from states that have received a lot of farm-related disaster money in the past few years – Montana, the Dakotas, Texas – are pushing for this year’s Farm Bill to put in place a permanent disaster relief fund that could get money to suffering farmer quickly and efficiently. But others don’t want the permanent program (and the accompanying tax measures that would be needed to pay for it), insisting that the money could be better spent elsewhere.

Critics of the permanent disaster program argue that it would make major recipients of disaster aid more reliant on federal money and encourage the production of crops in bad locations:

>Close inspection of ad hoc disaster payments to farmers over the past two decades reveals that between 1985 and 2005, five Great Plains states – Texas, North Dakota, Minnesota, South Dakota and Kansas – received nearly 40 percent of total disaster spending, according to USDA data compiled by the Environmental Working Group. Moreover, 1 percent of the total number of disaster relief recipients – 21,000 recipients – received disaster payments in at least 11 of the 21 years and collected nearly 10 percent of the overall disaster funding from 1985 to 2005. About two-thirds of farmers (66 percent) for whom disaster assistance is routine live in just four states: Texas, South Dakota, North Dakota and Oklahoma.
>
>Worse, a report last year by the Government Accountability Office suggests that areas in these states with the highest rates of conversion of grassland to intensive crop production tend to be the biggest recipients of disaster payments. If these lands were consistently profitable to grow crops on, then they would have been cultivated long ago. Routine disaster payments on top of other commodity subsidy payments remove the risk from growing crops on marginal, environmentally sensitive lands, creating an incentive to plow up what little is left of our native prairies. Moreover, these payments create a vicious cycle that wastes taxpayer dollars. Risky production decisions result in crop failures that are rewarded with federal payouts that lead farmers to bring more marginal land into production, resulting in more crop failures.

But supporters of the new program point to a mechanism in it that would increase participation in crop insurance programs, thus reducing the need for emergency aid:

>The proposed new program would supplement the current crop insurance program, and would require a farmer to carry at least the catastrophic level of coverage as a prerequisite for a payment.
>
>According to CBO, the program would cost $5.1 billion over five years (FY 2008-12). CBO estimates that $2.9 billion of that amount would go directly to crop and livestock producers in the form of direct disaster payments and the other $2.2 billion would cover increased crop insurance costs associated with the crop insurance purchase requirement. Most of the cost would be funded through a mandated transfer of 3.34 percent of annual customs receipts from the U.S. Treasury to the new trust fund.
>
>Under the proposed program, an eligible farmer in a disaster-declared county would receive 52 percent of the difference between an established guaranteed level of revenue and actual total farm revenue. The target level of revenue would be based on the level of crop insurance coverage selected by the farmer, thus increasing if a farmer opts for higher levels of coverage.
>
>The proposal also allows the trust fund to be tapped for indemnity payments to livestock producers and orchardists to compensate for significant mortality losses caused by a natural disaster. Up to $35 million annually from the fund also could be used for livestock, honey bee, and farm-raised fish losses caused by adverse weather or other environmental conditions.

The map above shows the distribution of disaster dollars from 1985-2006.

By the time April 15th comes around next year, deciphering government documents and filling out tax forms might become a much easier task. The House today is slated to vote on (and probably approve) the Plain Language in Government Communications Act of 2007, which would require the federal Government to write all forms, letters and notices that explain how to do your taxes or apply for government benefits or services in plain, understandable English.

If the bill becomes law – a companion measure is currently progressing in the Senate – the government will be required by law to communicate with citizens in a way that is actually helpful (kinda hard to imagine, I know).

For more on this bill, see this piece from the Washington Post, this press release from the bill’s sponsor including some examples of best practice, all the resources on the PlainLanguage.gov website, and, of course, the aggregated news and blog coverage of the bill from OpenCongress.

Shirley A Harrow writes:

>Hundreds of surviving members of the United states Cadet Nurse Corps are waging a grass roots effort to garner support for their place as Veterans of WWII. They were part of the US Public Health Service which was militarized for the duration of WWII. Their uniforms bore the insignia of the USPHS Corps of Commissioned officers. From 1943-1945 The USCNC recruited 180,000 young women; 124,000 survived the rigors and regulations in service to their country. In actuality,they were the ROTC of today and would be officers and veterans. Sixty years and seven US Cadet Nurse Equity Bills have died in committee, without a hearing.

The United States Cadet Nurse Corps Equity Act would give veteran status and benefits, as well as an official honorable discharge from the military, to all surviving World War II Cadet Nurses.

Shirley’s website with tons more info on the history Cadet Nurses can be found here.

This was submitted to OpenCongress as a tip. If there’s something you want highlighted on this blog, send us a tip and, as long as it’s relevant, we’ll put it up.

When the Senate debated their housing stimulus bill last week, Democrats decided to leave out their proposal to let bankruptcy judges modify the terms of subprime loans in order to help ensure bipartisan support for the overall bill. But they are still hoping to get the bankruptcy proposal passed in the form of a stand-alone bill. While Democratic leaders in both the House and Senate are trying to shore up support for the measure, the mortgage industry is intensifying their push against the bill and trying to refocus Congress’ attention on a milder alternative.

The bankruptcy bill, which has been introduced in the Senate by Dick Durbin (D-IL) and in the House by Brad Miller (D-NC) and Linda Sanchez (D-CA) could help 600,000 or so families save their homes from foreclosure, according to research by the Center for Responsible Lending. According to a post Miller’s DailyKos diary, “home mortgages are the only form of secured debt that is exempt from modification in bankruptcy. A bankruptcy court can modify a mortgage on investment property, a car loan, or a loan secured by a washer and drier, but not a home mortgage.” Both the Senate and House bills would eliminate the home mortgage exemption, and because bankruptcy courts are already modifying other kinds of debt, there’s already an established body of law on how to do it:

>If the debt exceeds the value of the collateral, the court can limit the debt secured by the collateral to the value of the collateral and treat the rest as unsecured, which goes to the back of the line for payment. And the court can then set a term of up to thirty years and an interest rate of prime plus a couple of points, because someone in bankruptcy is a greater risk than the typical debtor.

The reporters at CongressDaily ($) are true Hill insiders, and on Tuesday they reported that mortgage industry lobbyists have come to D.C. this week to “fight hard” against the measure. Here’s part of an op-ed from the chairman of the Mortgage Bankers Association that explains their opposition:

>For all of its well-intentioned language, the current bankruptcy proposals in both houses of Congress will result in higher interest rates, larger down payment requirements and tighter lending restrictions, all to the detriment of future borrowers.
>
>Why? Because lenders will respond to new risks associated with loans being altered by a judge. The result — the American Dream of homeownership will be put on hold for millions.
>
>…
>
>The real winners in bankruptcy reform are bankruptcy attorneys. At an average of $3,000 per filing, this group stands to gain $1.8 billion.

According to the CongressDaily article, the mortgage industry lobbyists are “taking a more neutral approach” to a competing loan modification bill, the Emergency Mortgage Loan Modification Act. That bill would shield banks and other financial institutions that services mortgages from being sued by debt-holding investors when they modify subprime loans.

“I think it’s in the best interests of at-risk homeowners and investors to work out payment terms that give a homeowner financial stability and the investor some return for their investment,” the bill’s sponsor, Michael Castle (R-DE) said upon introducing it. “Without this legislation, I am concerned that lawsuits could bring modifications to a halt.”

In order to be legally protected while modifying loans, the bill requires mortgage servicers to work towards maximizing, or at least not adversely affecting, returns for mortgage investors in the aggregate. It states that servicers will be considered to be working on behalf of the investors, and shielded, if they can show that they reasonably believed that their loan modificatios would “maximize the net present value to be realized on the loan over that which would be realized through foreclosure.”

This financial protection for the mortgage industry is not a part of the Democrat’s bankruptcy proposal. Under the Democrats’ bill, the bankruptcy judges who would be in charge of reworking mortgages would not be held liable for maximizing investors’ profits. There would be no aggregate consideration — just case-by-case rulings for people who file for bankruptcy as an attempt to save their homes.

It seems to me that the mortgage servicer shield bill isn’t being tacitly supported by the mortgage industry as a lesser of two evils, but because it would actually be boon for them. It would create an army of independent mortgage servicers, motivated by the fees they collect, delaying foreclosures just to the extent that it is still financially beneficial to investors, and no more.

This is all well outside my area of expertise, so I’d love to hear anybody else’s thoughts on this. Is there some major part of this that I’m missing?

Cross-posted from SENATUS

The most contentious debate yesterday on the Highway Corrections Bill (H.R. 1195) took place on an amendment offered by Senator Coburn (R-OK) that would launch a Congressional investigation of an earmark to the 2005 Transportation Bill.

The earmark was supposed to provide some $10 million for lane widening and other renovations to Interstate 75 in Florida. It was included in the House bill, the Senate bill and then finally in the conference report which was passed by both bodies. The controversy begins after the final bill had been passed but before it had been signed by the President. Somewhere in between that time-frame, the earmark was completely changed to provide the same amount of funding for a specific interchange along Coconut Road in Florida.

Who was responsible for this change? That answer could come as a result of Senator Coburn’s amendment. The Hill reports on what outside groups believe took place:

>Watchdog groups, including Taxpayers for Common Sense, have accused Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), who was chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee when the Coconut Road earmark was changed, or his staff of making the change.
>
>Young’s critics argue the change was made to benefit Daniel Aronoff, who owns land along Coconut Road and helped organize a fundraiser for Young earlier that year.

Senator Coburn wants to create a bipartisan and bicameral panel consisting of 8 members which would be charged with investigating the situation, making any necessary recommendations on how to prevent this action in the future and possibly referring the issue to the Department of Justice should they suspect criminal activity was involved. The panel would be divided as follows: 2 members appointed by the House Speaker, 2 members appointed by the House Minority Leader, 2 members appointed by the Senate Majority Leader and 2 members appointed by the Senate Minority Leader.

Senator Boxer (D-CA) has an alternative idea. She is in favor of the investigation, even suggesting yesterday that people should go to jail for any criminal wrongdoing relating to the earmark switch-a-roo. However, she wants to insert language in the Highway Corrections Bill to call on the Department of Justice to launch an investigation into the matter instead of Congress. Senator Boxer believes this will remove any politics from the situation while also avoiding a cloudy constitutional area where the Senate is essentially investigating the House. Senator Coburn disagrees with this approach and believes that it sets a bad precedent in the future by stripping Congress of the power to investigate itself.

Senator Boxer’s viewpoint may win out at the end of the day, possibly for the sake of keeping the bill’s delicate bicameral support intact. With that being said, Senator Coburn does have some bipartisan support for his approach including strong support from both Florida Senators.

Pictured above is Rep. Don Young (R-AK), the sposnor of the Coconut ROad earmark.

An upcoming supplemental funding bill for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may be Democrats’ best chance to have President Bush sign their remaining domestic priorities into law before the session ends. The President has asked Congress for an additional $108.1 billion for the wars in 2008. But members of the Democratic leadership are formulating a plan that would give Bush much more than he asked for — this year’s war money, an additional $70 billion for the wars in fiscal year 2009 and a wide smattering of domestic funds.

>"This would be a strong possibility," said one senior Democratic aide, adding that by passing 2009 war funding now, Congress “could provide the next president the ability to use the funds any way they wish.”
>
>The aide said that a Democratic president, for example, would be free to use the money to begin withdrawing troops.
>
>More immediately, Democratic leaders believe that by offering more than $170 billion in war funding, they can blunt Republican attacks on them for failing to support the troops, a senior Democratic appropriator said. The lawmaker, who declined to be identified, said the strategy also would increase Democrats’ leverage to seek extra discretionary funding.
>
>…
>
>The Senate panel is considering including around $24 billion in domestic funding, a Senate aide said, with about $10 billion of that to be set aside for infrastructure projects such as bridge and road repairs.
>
>It also could include funding for economic “stimulus” items, such as unemployment insurance, as Democrats try to link the war’s cost to the struggling U.S. economy.
>
>Other possible add-ons include $500 million for the World Food Programme and $350 million for wildfire suppression programs, appropriators said.

They may also try adding a bipartisan bill to increase college education benefits for soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s a popular proposal that Bush supports — including it in the supplemental package would make it much more difficult for him to veto the bill.

There haven’t been any official statements on this, so details are hard to confirm. But it’s been speculated by various aides that Bush’s requested war funding level for 2008 – $108.1 billion – may be reduced by Democrats to about $102 billion in order to make room for the domestic spending. They may also bypass the normal committee process and bring the bill straight to the floors of the House and Senate to avoid a lengthy and contentious markup.

The war supplemental will be officially in introduced in the next couple of weeks and on the floor of the House in early May. In the meantime, Democrats will continue their push to link the growing costs of the war with the economic problems back home.

A few weeks ago, we announced that OpenCongress has been chosen as a Featured Project in this year’s NetSquared conference. Next week we’ll be going to San Jose, California to share some of our ideas for the future of the site, and if we are selected from among the finalists, we could receive some prize money & other support to help us put our ideas into action. Thanks again to everyone who voted for us and made this opportunity possible! I want to share with everyone what we’ve been thinking about so we can get your feedback.

First, integrating OpenCalais would tap us into rich streams of data about every lawmaker, bill and issue area in Congress. We want to use this to give OpenCongress users access to important information about their tracked items that can’t be found through the usual means, like databases and search engines. The Calais Web service organizes related content in an open, interoperable, and tagged format.

So, if you’re tracking a senator, data from OpenCalais can automatically display an array of associated people, organizations, facts, and events about that person. For example, if you’re tracking Sen. McCain, on your page of tracked items you would be presented with relevant facts such as, “Sen. McCain is a Ranking Member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which will have its next meeting on May 22, 2008.” Ideally this automated process would occasionally unearth interesting tidbits — say, whether a Member of Congress has family members working in an industry she oversees. We also want to use Calais to help people find more bills, lawmakers and issues they may care about. This would work kind of like some of the cool features on Amazon.com — when a user decides to track a bill, we’ll use Calais data to help us find other bills or lawmakers that that user may also be interested in following.

Second, we want to bring in the professionally-moderated news coverage made available by Daylife. Daylife gathers news from thousands of select news sites, wire and image services, and blogs worldwide, and organizes them around their key bits of information. In addition to news articles, Daylife is organizing juicy quotes from people in the news, as well as collecting an incredible array of photographs to give a visual context to current issues and affairs.

We want to give all this information to My OpenCongress users for their tracked items — imagine it reading, “Daylife editors selected ten news articles, eight quotes and six photos about Sen. Obama in the past week. Click here to view them”. Instead of following every news mention of a bill or issue (higher-volume), users could choose to receive a stream of only Daylife-featured content (lower-volume).

Check out the information DayLife has right now for some of the most popular content on OpenCongress – for example, the Farm Bill and the Economic Stimulus Bill, two of our most-viewed bill, and Ted Kennedy and Vito Fossella, two legislators who are hot on the site right now. In short, what’s displayed there is the type of information we’d like to make available at your fingertips directly on OpenCongress pages. We’ve been in touch with Vineet Gupta, a lead programmer with the DayLife team, and he agrees that such a setup would be a productive use of both our services.

Real quick, here’s how you can help and add your input. First, create a free NetSquared account, then head over to our mashup proposal page: Tracking Congress With Social Data. There, you can give our project a “star” and drop a quick comment with your input (e.g., describe how you would use the info we’re seeking to make accessible). This mashup would be good step forward in our work to bring you all the best info about Congress, all in one place. Let us know what you think, and thanks again!

Here are some of the most notable and contentious pieces of legislation that have been been dropped in the bill hopper and introduced into Congress in the past couple of weeks. They include proposals for dealing with record gas prices, the legal status of marijuana, online gambling, and government spending. There’s still time left in this session for Congress to take up some of these issues — if you support or oppose any of these bills, track them with on My OpenCongress and start organizing a push to influence Congress.

A Gas Tax Holiday

John McCain (R-AZ) recently introduced S.2890, a bill to remove Federal taxes on gasoline between Memorial Day and Labor Day of 2008.

>“Hard-working American families are suffering from higher gasoline prices, and they need relief. Now is the time to act with a tangible plan to address this problem,” said McCain. “The ‘tax holiday’ will make the summer driving season easier for people across the nation.”
>
>The Federal gas tax was first established by Congress in 1932 to correct a federal budgetary imbalance. Today, the tax is collected and deposited in the Highway Trust Fund to support our nation’s roads and highways. The McCain bill would ensure that the Highway Trust Fund is not depleted during this “gas tax holiday” by transferring monies from the General Treasury. The legislation would not affect highway construction projects.

Link

An End to Citizen-Funded Self-Aggrandizing

Michael McCaul (R-TX) and 24 Republican co-sponsors recently introduced H.R.5771, a bill that would bar members of Congress from earmarking money to be used for projects or programs named after themselves or any other current member of Congress.

>“The American people are outraged by the waste and abuse they see in Congressional earmarks. One of the most egregious of these practices is Members using taxpayer money to name the projects after themselves,” said McCaul. “My bill is very simple. It prohibits federal funds from being used for any project named after a sitting member of Congress.”

Believe it or not, this does happen.

Link

Decriminalizing Marijuana

I know 4/20 was yesterday, but it still seems worth pointing gout that Barney Frank (D-MA) recently introduced H.R 5843, a bill to remove all Federal penalties for the possession or not-for-profit transfer of small amounts of marijuana.

>"The federal government should remove the current conflict with state law and allow states to decide on these matters for themselves. Eleven states have laws that significantly reduce penalties for possession of small amounts of marijuana,1 in many cases providing for a mere civil fine."

For more specifics on what the bill would and wouldn’t do, refer to Frank’s detailed press release. And on a related note, Frank has also introduced H.R.5842, which would reclassify marijuana as a schedule II drug, recognize its medical value, and create regulatory framework for the FDA to begin a drug approval process for marijuana.

Stop the Internet Gambling Ban

And another one from Frank — his recently introduced H.R.5767 would effectively block the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (UIGEA).

>Stating that the Internet Gambling Enforcement Act infringes on two basic rights of importance to Americans, “the ability to do with their money as they see fit, and the freedom from government interference with the Internet,” Reps. Barney Frank (D-MA) and Ron Paul (R-TX) introduced the bill H.R. 5767, which would forbid the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve from creating or implementing any regulation that would require the financial industry from blocking Internet gambling transactions.

Federal Spending Info Online

John Cornyn (R-TX) recently introduced a bill, the Federal Spending and Taxpayer Accessibility Act of 2008, that would create a searchable website for information about earmarks and federal contracts and grants. It would also require the Secretary of the Treasury to provide all taxpayers with a statement outlining the amount of Federal income taxes they have paid over the years and an estimate of what they will likely pay in the course of their lives.

>“One of my top priorities in the Senate has been to increase public access to government information,” Sen. Cornyn said. “This latest effort will provide taxpayers unprecedented information about how their money is spent, and how their taxes are paid. Increasing transparency in government spending is essential for accountability and fiscal responsibility.”

The bill specifies that the earmark database must be searchable by recipient, sponsor and State, and be available online “as soon as” an earmark is reported in Congress. It also specifies that data outlining the financial outlays of federal agencies must be downloadable.

Link

Noisier Hybrids

Edolphus Towns (D-NY) recently introduced the Pedestrian Safety Enhancement Act, which would put in place a minimum sound requirement so that blind people have a way to detect when hybrid vehicles are approaching.

>Because blind pedestrians cannot locate and evaluate traffic using their vision, they must listen to traffic to discern its speed, direction, and other attributes in order to travel safely and independently. Other people, including pedestrians who are not blind, bicyclists, runners, and small children, also benefit from hearing the sound of vehicle engines. New vehicles that employ hybrid or electric engine technology can be silent, rendering them extremely dangerous in situations where vehicles and pedestrians come into proximity with each other.

Link

Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

And finally, this one’s at least notable for its name. John Campbell’s (R-CA) Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is Act of 2008 would create a line on Federal tax forms to make it easier for people to make voluntary make donations to the federal government above their normal tax liability.

>Mr. Campbell says he has heard the “cries” of those wealthy Americans – Mrs. Clinton, Warren Buffett, Barbra Streisand – who reject the lower tax rates passed in 2001 and 2003 and complain that they and their fellow rich don’t pay enough. “It’s a great injustice that citizens wishing to fulfill their dream of paying more taxes cannot simply check a box on their 1040 form to make a donation,” he says. His bill would give liberals a chance to salve their consciences without having to raise taxes on millions of Americans who already feel overtaxed as it is.

(Cross-posted from Congresspedia, The citizen’s encyclopedia on Congress. Links to Congresspedia articles are in parentheses.)

This week in Congress, Democrats are looking at cutting a deal with President Bush over the Columbia Free Trade Agreement and the Senate will hold new hearings on global warming legislation hearings on Earth Day. Meanwhile, a new battle for extending Iraq War funding looms on the horizon.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is considering what to do about a trade agreement with Colombia (CP). She pressed the House to adopt a rule change earlier this month that prevents President Bush from requiring a vote on the agreement. Now, Democrats are investigating potential deals involving the trade agreement, while the White House has asked that Pelosi change her mind.

Some Democrats have proposed exchanging reworked trade adjustment assistance for a vote on the FTA. Others have suggested a deal for the reform of the Foreign Service Intelligence Act (CP) or an expanded State Children’s Health Insurance Program.

A standoff also looms over war funding for the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Congress is set to debate $108 billion for the rest of 2008, with another $70 billion in Pentagon requests for 2009 also on the horizon, and Democratic leaders will probably tie domestic programs—specifically, extended unemployment benefits—to any defense cash.

Following calls by President Bush to voluntarily reduce carbon emissions, the Senate Finance Committee this week will hear testimony on the taxation implications of cap-and-trade programs, which place limits on carbon emissions but also gives credits to organizations that produce carbon lower levels. Those credits can then be purchased or traded in a market-system.

The Senate Environment Committee last year approved legislation—America’s Climate Security Act of 2007 (CP)—to establish a cap-and-trade program, and the full chamber is expected to begin debate on the measure in early June. President Bush has opposed such a program of mandatory emissions caps, and prefers a technology-based approach. He’ll face pressure to sign any climate legislation approved in Congress this year, which many see as more favorable to business than anything that will come during the next administration.

For a complete list of Senate and House hearings this week, see the original post on Congresspedia.

UPDATE: The Senate voted not to consider this bill by defeating a procedural motion requiring 60 votes. See how your senator voted here.

April 22nd is generally regarded as a day to celebrate the Earth, but it’s also Equal Pay Day, and the Senate is boosting awareness of this overshadowed holiday by planning a vote on a controversial bill that would strengthen equal pay laws. If the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2007 were law, the Civil Right Act of 1964 would be amended to make sure that its equal pay protections are available in all cases that pay discrimination occurs, not just when complaints are filed within 180 days of the incident as the law currently requires.

The bill came to be is response to the Supreme Court’s ruling last May in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. Lilly Ledbetter (pictured at right) had worked for Goodyear Tire and Rubber for 15 years. After discovering that for many years her pay had been 15 percent less than what the lowest-paid male employee in her position had been making, she sued them. The Court rejected her lawsuit, though, noting that Equal Employment Opportunity Commission procedures require claims to be filed within 180 days of when the discrimination took place. The bill bearing her name that the Senate will vote on tomorrow would change the law that was the basis for the Court’s ruling. The bill would make sure that companies can be sued for wage discrimination whenever they issue a paycheck, no matter how long ago the alleged discrimination occurred.

Christy Hardin Smith at <a href=“http://firedoglake.com/2008/04/21/fdl-welcomes-rep-eleanor-holmes-norton-on-the-lilly-ledbetter-fair-pay-act/>Firedoglake points to this summary of the situation from the ”https://secure.aclu.org/site/Advocacy?page=SplashPage&pagename=homepage&id=855">ACLU:

>…The Ledbetter decision not only reversed years of employment law, it also ignored the realities of a workplace. Often employees don’t know what their co-workers are paid; an expectation that they learn that information within the first 180 days of a pay decision is unreasonable. Unless Congress intervenes, companies will be able to discriminate for years and unjustly profit from paying women, minorities, the elderly, and people with disabilities less, as long as it keeps the discrimination secret for a few months.

>
>The U.S. House of Representatives passed “The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act” (H.R. 2831) to correct this problem, and to ensure employers do not profit from years of discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, and disability, simply because their employees were unaware of the discrimination for 180 days. The bill clarified this wage discrimination is not a one-time occurrence, but rather, that each discriminatory paycheck an employer issues represents an ongoing violation of the law.

Although the bill passed the House, it may not make it through the Senate. Unlike House rules, the Senate has a rule allowing either party to require a 60-vote supermajority. The Republican minority has been using this rule at an unprecedented level in this session of Congress and there’s no doubt they will use it for this bill. Of the 43 co-sponsors the Senate version of the bill has, only two are Republicans. That means that, assuming all 51 Senate Democrats vote for the bill, they will still need to find at least seven more Republicans to cross party lines and vote with them.

The bill’s opponents argue that overturning the statute of limitation that the Lebetter decisions was based on could create new burdens for employees and employers. Here’s the AEI’s Ted Frank explaining why the bill may be a bad idea:

>As I note in my most recent law review article, there is an inverse relationship between wages and legal restrictions on employment-at-will. Two economists working for Rand found in 1992 that wrongful termination suits cause a decline in employment about equivalent to a 10% decrease in wages—and that was before the effects of the Civil Rights Act of 1991 were fully measured.
>
>Employers are not stupid. To the extent every employee is a potential lawsuit, that is a cost of hiring an employee. As those costs go up, employers will hire fewer employees, and charge “insurance” to the employees they do hire by reducing their wages to account for the possibility of a future lawsuit. If the misnamed “Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act” passes, the vast majority of workers will be worse off, as money that would have gone to pay employees will instead go to pay attorneys. There should be a better reason to pass such harmful legislation than the fact that Ms. Ledbetter’s attorney sued under the wrong statute. If Congress really wishes to help workers, they should reject this legislation, and aim a closer eye at the liability system that hurts our economy.

In a whirlwind of good-government legislating, the House on Wednesday passed three separate bills aimed at holding federal contractors more accountable. Below are descriptions of the three bills, taken from OMB Watch, Sunlight via POGO, and GovExec, in that order.

Government Contractor Accountability Act of 2007 (H.R.3928):

>Although publicly-traded firms are required by the Securities and Exchange Commission to disclose the names and salaries of top-level managers, many firms that contract with the federal government, like private security company BlackwaterUSA, are private entities for which this information is not publicly available. H.R. 3928 is intended to provide the federal government and citizens insight into whether federal contractors are adding value to federal procurement or simply lining the pockets of a select few individuals.
>
>The measure would provide this level of transparency by requiring federal contracting firms or grant recipients receiving more than 80 percent of their revenue from the federal government to disclose the names and salaries of their most highly compensated executives and would make this information available in the Federal Procurement Data System-Next Generation (FPDS-NG). During the committee markup, an amendment from Rep. Chris Murphy (D-CT) was adopted that would require disclosure of this information only from companies that have more than $25 million in gross revenues. The bill does not differentiate between for-profit and nonprofit companies.

Contractors and Federal Spending Accountability Act of 2007 (H.R.3033):

>[H.R.3033], introduced by Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), would essentially formalize POGO’s Federal Contractor Misconduct Database by establishing a government database with centralized information on federal contractors who have broken the law and violated federal regulations. As of now, there are almost no safeguards in place to prevent irresponsible contractors from receiving future taxpayer dollars. The proposed database would allow procurement officials to become more informed about a company’s corporate history before making contracting decisions.

Close the Contractor Fraud Loophole Act (H.R. 5712):

>The legislation is meant to reverse the exclusion of companies working on overseas contracts from a proposed rule change to the Federal Acquisition Regulation. The rule would require contractors to self-report criminal violations of contracting rules, such as fraud, as well as overpayments by the government. Bush administration officials recently told lawmakers on the Government Management, Organization and Procurement Subcommittee that the exclusionary language was a “drafting error” and they were removing such language from the proposed rule, rendering the legislation redundant.
>
>Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., who introduced the bill, has expressed skepticism that the administration will follow up on closing the “loophole” and insisted that the legislation is necessary.

(Cross-posted from SENATUS)

The Senate has passed the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act by a vote of 95 (Y) to 0 (N). This bill was passed by the House in April of last year. The bill has had somewhat of an odd journey in Congress bouncing back and forth between the House and Senate for some 13 years. It hadn’t previously passed both the House and Senate in the same session of Congress. The Senate recently passed the bill in 2003 and 2005 by an overwhelming margin.

The bill had previously been held up by Senator Coburn (R-OK). The New York Times reports on his reason for objecting:

>One of Senator Coburn’s main concerns was that the bill might subject employers to civil rights lawsuits stemming from disputes over medical coverage. And employers that also finance their own health insurance, he said, might be sued twice. “We would have created a trial lawyers’ bonanza,” he said.
>
>Senator Coburn, a medical doctor, had called for a “firewall” between the employer and insurance sections of the bill. “We withstood all the criticism we got from lots of people, and now we got it fixed,” he said.
>
>Proponents of the bill say the negotiated changes do not affect the substance of the legislation.

• forbids insurance companies from denying coverage or raising premiums based on genetic information

• forbids insurers and employers from requiring a person to submit to genetic testing

• forbids discrimination against any person based on their personal or family genetic information

• prohibits labor organizations from denying membership based on genetic information

• prohibits the disclosure or purchase of genetic information by insurers or health planning companies
  

For more information on the vote and the contents of the measure, you can read this article provided by Reuters.

Barney Frank (D-MA) has an interesting plan to prevent some potential foreclosures. He wants to let the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) step in and work out new mutually-beneficial deals between struggling homeowners, mortgage lenders and the government. The plan, also known as the FHA Housing Stabilization and Homeownership Retention Act, was approved yesterday by the House Financial Service Committee, and is likely going to be a central element in Congress’s package of housing stimulus proposals that is beginning to shape up.

Frank’s bill would create a new program within the FHA to give out new, government-backed loans with sensible repayment plans to homeowners who are at risk of defaulting on their current mortgages. The bill would limit the amount of outstanding loans the FHA can refinance to $300 billion. Here are the details on how the refinancing would work, as provided by the House Financial Services Committee:

>In exchange for the acceptance of a substantial write-down of principal, the existing lender or mortgage holder who chooses to participate would receive a “short payment” (i.e. a payment for less than the outstanding balance as payment in full) from the proceeds of a new FHA-guaranteed loan if the new loan would have terms that the borrower can reasonably be expected to pay and the borrower agrees to share future home appreciation with the government. In short, the program would provide refinancing assistance to allow families to stay in their homes, protect neighborhoods and help stabilize the housing market.
>
>Under the program, a borrower or existing loan servicer of an eligible loan would contact an FHA-approved lender, who would determine the size of a loan that would be consistent with the requirements of the program and that the borrower could reasonably repay. If the current lender or mortgage holder agrees to a write-down that is sufficient to meet the requirements of the program and make the new loan affordable, the FHA-lender will pay off the discounted existing mortgage.
>
>In addition to a first lien, the government will retain a share of future home-price appreciation to help defray the government’s costs and prevent unjust enrichment (e.g., borrower flipping). When the borrower sells the home or refinances the loan, the borrower will pay from any profits the higher of (1) an ongoing exit fee equal to 3 percent of the original FHA loan balance; or (2) a declining percentage of any profits (e.g., from 100 percent in year one to 20 percent in year five and 0 thereafter). After year five only the 3 percent exit fee will apply from borrower profits.

See the Financial Service Committee page for a list of eligibility requirements for both existing loans and the new FHA loans. Also, see Calculated Risk for an examination the whole plan in more detail

The big question about this bill is whether or not it will come as a cost to taxpayers. Because FHA loans are backed by the government, if a borrower of one of the new FHA loans were to default taxpayers may be the ones paying it back. But, as Dana Chasin of OMB Watch points out, “taxpayers also might not be on the hook for a penny — and, in fact, the federal government might ultimately make a pretty penny in the process under the plan.” Truth is, nobody knows, and we’ll have no reasonable guess to go off of until the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) finishes up their analysis of the bill. Frank’s initial estimate is that “it will have an ultimate cost between 1 and 2 percent of this $300 billion authorization.”

The administration is skeptical of the proposal. U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson seems to think it’s a decent idea, saying that “there are not huge differences” between Frank’s bill and a relaxation of FHA rules that the administration has already put into effect. However, the Department of Housing and Urban Development recently came out strongly against Frank’s bill. In a letter (pdf) to Frank, Roy Bernardi, the current Acting HUD Secretary, wrote:

>With regard to H.R. 5830, the bill is an overly prescriptive attempt to legislate FHA’s underwriting standards in a way that would force the agency and taxpayers to take on excessive risk and would jeopardize its stability. The bill’s design would significantly limit lender participation, and the reliance on a new Oversight Board would add another layer of bureaucracy and delay any of the bill’s purported benefits. Furthermore, unlike the Administration’s, this legislation may come at a cost to taxpayers who are not participating in the new program. An attempt to shift costs to taxpayers would constitute a bailout. For all these reasons, the Administration strongly opposes H.R. 5830.

Notice, there has been no formal veto threat issued yet. Both sides, the administration and Democrats in Congress, are jockeying for position right now, trying to make sure they can get some of their priorities passed in the housing package. Here’s Frank’s guess of how this may play out:

>He said there’s a good chance that his FHA refinancing proposal would be combined in a package with tax provisions, legislation to reform so-called government sponsored enterprises and another bill to modernize the FHA. The latter two are things the White House very much wants done.
>
>That might help the administration hold its nose and take the whole package.
>
>“The administration doesn’t like some parts of it, but likes other parts – it would be a genuine kind of compromise,” Frank said.
>
>“So while the administration says now that they don’t like this particular bill, it may get packaged into a number of other things they like.”
>
>He predicted a “strong possibility” of such a package moving in May.

There are a lot of creative works in the world that are protected by a copyright, the holder of which can’t be tracked down. These are known as orphan works, and a pair of bills introduced in Congress last week seek to bring them back into the arena of creative reuse. The bills, H.R. 5889 in the House and S. 2913 in the Senate, would limit the amount of statutory damages that could be awarded should the copyright holder of an infringed orphan work eventually pop up.

The idea behind the bills is simple: if you want to use a work that might be copyrighted, but after a diligent search can’t find the owner, you may use the work without fear of a prohibitively large lawsuit.

What constitutes a diligent search? Here’s how it’s spelled out in the bill:

• the actions taken in performing that search are reasonable and appropriate under the facts relevant to that search, including whether the infringer took actions based on facts uncovered by the search itself.

• the infringer employed the applicable best practices maintained by the Register of Copyrights under subparagraph (these “best practices” will be created and made available by the Register of Copyrights upon the bill’s enactment).

• the infringer performed the search before using the work and at a time that was reasonably proximate to the commencement of the infringement.
  
  
  
  

And in the off chance that a copyright holder shows up after their work has been improperly infringed as an orphan work, the bills would provide for them to be “reasonably compensated.”

The House version of the bill contains a provision aimed at encouraging more artists and other creators to register their copyrighted works. A work does not have to be registered in order for it to be officially copyrighted. It’s a formality; the copyright exists regardless of it being registered with the copyright office. The House bill would encourage more people to pay to register their copyrights by allowing the courts to place a higher value on registered works when determining reasonable compensation. This bit of the bill has some artists concerned that it will free up all their unregistered copyrighted work to be used by others as orphans. Here’s how this was described during an interview between artist Brad Holland and Mark Simon of the Illustrators’ Partnership:

>Holland: Under this orphan works legislation, nothing you do would be protected. Not a single thing – not a sketch, not a finished picture, not a snapshot, not a home video – nothing you do would be protected unless you registered it with a commercial registry. Now these commercial registries don’t even exist. The idea is they’re going to change the law, in a sense orphaning anything you have ever done or that you ever will do unless you register the work with these so far non-existent registries, which they expect the private sector to pop up and supply.
>
>Simon: So, we have to pay to own our own work?
>
>Holland: Yes. You would have to pay to own any work that you wanted to protect. Now, of course, if you didn’t mind creating something and letting it sit, and hope that nobody found it and infringed it, as the guy at the copyright office said: “go ahead and be my guest.” But, if you want to protect anything you do for either commercial, or just as a matter of protecting your own privacy – as a matter of protecting your own creative ideas. You know, suppose you do a sketch – suppose you do a job for a client and send them five sketches. They pick one. You have to register the other four too because there’s no telling that the art director might let the sketch sit in a drawer, somebody else could find it, it doesn’t have a name on it, and suddenly it’s their idea, it’s their sketch. They can use it however they want. That would be the premise of this new orphan works legislation. In effect, it would orphan ever work that you’ve ever done, including work that you’ve registered with the copyright office over the last 30 years. If you have already sent a registration to the copyright office and registered your work, under this orphan works bill you’d still have to register it again with a commercial registry.

In a blog post entitled “”http://maradydd.livejournal.com/374886.html">Six Misconceptions About Orphaned Works," Meredith L. Patterson counters some of the claims coming form concerned artists (particularly those voiced in an article by the above interviewer, Mark Simon). Responding to Simon’s statement that, if someone doesn’t pay to register their copyright, “anyone in the entire world will be able to use it for free,” Patterson says:

>Perhaps he’s envisioning a scenario where a user spends five minutes googling, comes up with nothing, calls that a “good faith” search and forges ahead with an infringing use. That’s not going to fly before the court; the user will have to detail how he conducted the search, and if the copyright owner can demonstrate that no, actually, it is quite easy to find the work’s original owner, the “good faith” provision doesn’t apply. And even if the “good faith” provision does apply, the Copyright Office recommends that the user should still have to compensate the owner for a reasonable amount.
>
>…
>
>The basics are, well, pretty basic. An orphaned work is a work for which no legitimate rights-holder can be found. If the legitimate rights-holder resurfaces, it is not an orphaned work any more. Plain and simple.

This debate seems to be anticipating some future legal precedent that will have to be set by the courts, but it’s the main issue accompanying the introduction of these bills.

More immediately, there are several differences between the House and Senate versions of these bills that will have to be worked out. Plagiarism Today lists them in convenient bullet points.

Hundreds of veterans and members of Congress from both sides of the aisle got together today on the steps of the Capitol Building to rally for the Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act of 2007, a bill designed to expand education opportunities for returning soldiers. It was an impressive outpouring, and the bill’s probably coming to the floors of the Senate and House soon as a part of an upcoming war funding bill. But for all its broad and bipartisan support (it has 57 Senate co-sponsors and 241 in the House) it may be vetoed. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has called the bill unworkable and President Bush has promised to veto the whole war funding bill if Congress puts in any extras.

The leading Senate sponsors of the bill, Jim Webb (D-VA) and Chuck Hagel (R-NE) make their case for the bill in a New York Times op-ed:

>Veterans today have only the Montgomery G.I. Bill, which requires a service member to pay $100 a month for the first year of his or her enlistment in order to receive a flat payment for college that averages $800 a month. This was a reasonable enlistment incentive for peacetime service, but it is an insufficient reward for wartime service today. It is hardly enough to allow a veteran to attend many community colleges.
>
>It would cover only about 13 percent of the cost of attending Columbia, 42 percent at the University of Hawaii, 14 percent at Washington and Lee, 26 percent at U.C.L.A. and 11 percent at Harvard Law School.
>
>College costs have skyrocketed, and a full G.I. Bill for those who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan would be expensive. But Congress has recently appropriated $19 billion next year for federal education grants purely on the basis of financial need. A G.I. Bill for those who have given so much to our country, often including repeated combat tours, should be viewed as an obligation.

Their bill is designed to modernize veterans’ education benefits, and bring them on par with what was provided after World War II. Here’s an overview of how it would work, as provided by Senator Webb’s fact sheet (PDF):

• Increased educational benefits would be available to all members of the military who have served on active duty since September 11, 2001, including activated reservists and National Guard. To qualify, veterans must have served at least three to thirty-six months of qualified active duty, beginning on or after September 11, 2001.

• The bill provides for educational benefits to be paid in amounts linked to the amount of active duty served in the military after 9/11. Generally, veterans would receive some amount of assistance proportional to their service for 36 months, which equals four academic years. Veterans would still be eligible to receive any incentive-based supplemental educational assistance from their military branch for which they qualify.

• Benefits provided under the bill would allow veterans pursuing an approved program of education to receive payments covering the established charges of their program, up to the cost of the most expensive instate public school, plus a monthly stipend equivalent to housing costs in their area. The bill would allow additional payments for tutorial assistance, as well as licensure and certification tests.

• The bill would create a new program in which the government will agree to match, dollar for dollar, any voluntary additional contributions to veterans from institutions whose tuition is more expensive than the maximum educational assistance provided under S.22.

• Veterans would have up to fifteen years, compared to ten years under the Montgomery G.I. Bill, after they leave active duty to use their educational assistance entitlement. Veterans would be barred from receiving concurrent assistance from this program and another similar program.
  
  
  
  

The main concern about the bill seems to be that it could cause people to leave the military earlier because of the juicy benefits they would have waiting for them. John McCain (R-AZ) has introduced a competing GI bill that would encourage servicemembers to remain in the military by providing a moderate increase in benefits initially, but a drastic increase after 12 years of service.

As soon as next week Congress will take up their last must-pass bill this session — a supplemental spending bill to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Democrats are going to try to attach some of their remaining domestic priorities – unemployment insurance extension, increase in food stamps, veterans’ education benefits – to the bill and hope that President Bush accepts them in a package deal with the war money he has requested. But a crude outline of the Democratic leadership’s current plan for dealing with the bill was revealed today by a House aide, and it may make it easier for Republicans and conservative Democrats to keep the domestic spending out.

>A senior House aide said that the current plan is to hold three separate votes in the House: one for the war funding, one for domestic items, and one for a series of Iraq-related war policy provisions. These votes, which likely would all be called “amendments,” would then be joined together and sent to the Senate as a package.

The thinking, I believe, is that holding three separate votes will allow Democrats to place politically popular votes against the war money, for a withdrawal timeline, and for the domestic programs money. But a side effect may be that the 47 moderate-to-conservative Democrats that make up the Blue Dog coalition could keep the war supplemental from getting "loaded up like a Christmas tree” with domestic spending, as Mike Ross (D-AR), one of three Blue Dogs chairmen, recently warned against.

If all the parts of the supplemental were voted on at once, it would probably pass based on its a-little-something-for-everyone appeal. But Blue Dogs are good at sticking together and being effective when it comes to combating spending they oppose. It’s why they exist in the first place. If they stick together in opposing the domestic portion of the supplemental, they should have no problem defeating it with the help of House Republicans.

Republicans, who want to the supplemental to contain only war funds as President Bush has repeatedly insisted, understand that Blue Dogs are the key players to work with in the debate. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette ($):

>House Republicans think they can siphon off some Blue Dogs’ votes in order to have a say in how the bill is crafted.
>
>If there is too much domestic spending on the bill, “Republicans aren’t going to vote for it,” said Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri, the Republican whip. And because anti-war Democrats are leaning against any bill that doesn’t tie funds to a timed withdrawal in Iraq, “you’ve got a significant number of Democrats who aren’t going to be there no matter what. The Blue Dogs become really critical in that debate just to get the bill out of the House for the first time.”
>
>Rep. Mike Pence added more pressure.
>
>“A ‘clean’ supplemental would be a unique opportunity for my colleagues in the Democratic Party’s conservative caucus,” the Indiana Republican said. “I haven’t yet seen a consistent willingness to hold their party accountable for fiscal issues.”

Pence’s last claim is debatable – Blue Dogs have helped to keep some budgeting within paygo rules. But, yes, this does appear to be a situation where Blue Dogs could have a real impact. If all 47 Blue Dogs vote “nay” on the domestic spending part of the supplemental, the votes just won’t be there for it to pass. By trying to ensure that every House Democrat can place politically-popular votes for themselves, Democrats could sacrifice their last best chance at getting their domestic policies enacted. And even if they do go back and pass them later in the year through the regular appropriations process as President Bush would prefer, it will delay their economically-stimulating effects by many months.

John McCain (R-AZ) recently gained a surprising ally for his gas tax holiday proposal — Hillary Clinton (D-NY).

Reuters:

>A gas tax holiday proposed by U.S. presidential hopefuls John McCain and Hillary Clinton is viewed as a bad idea by many economists and has drawn unexpected support for Clinton rival Barack Obama, who also is opposed.
>
>"Score one for Obama," wrote Greg Mankiw, a former chairman of President George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers. “In light of the side effects associated with driving … gasoline taxes should be higher than they are, not lower.”
>
>Republican McCain and Democrat Clinton, who is battling Obama for their party’s nomination, both want to suspend the 18.4-cents-per-gallon federal gas tax during the peak summer driving months to ease the pain of soaring gas prices. The tax is used to fund the Highway Trust Fund that builds and maintains roads and bridges.

Economists tend to agree with Obama, even Clinton-supporting op-ed columnist Paul Krugman:

>Why doesn’t cutting the gas tax this summer make sense? It’s Econ 101 tax incidence theory: if the supply of a good is more or less unresponsive to the price, the price to consumers will always rise until the quantity demanded falls to match the quantity supplied. Cut taxes, and all that happens is that the pretax price rises by the same amount. The McCain gas tax plan is a giveaway to oil companies, disguised as a gift to consumers.
>
>Is the supply of gasoline really fixed? For this coming summer, it is. Refineries normally run flat out in the summer, the season of peak driving. Any elasticity in the supply comes earlier in the year, when refiners decide how much to put in inventories. The McCain/Clinton gas tax proposal comes too late for that. So it’s Econ 101: the tax cut really goes to the oil companies.

Though the gas tax holiday is gaining popularity among some very influential politicians, it looks like the Democratic congressional leadership is siding with the economists on this one. House Majority Steny Hoyer (D-MD) voluntarily came out against the idea today, which suggests that the bill is probably not going to come up for a vote:

>"I believe the suspension of the tax for a short period of time would not be a policy that I would think is particularly positive," Hoyer told reporters Wednesday. “I think the oil companies or those pricing their gasoline will simply up the prices. Our people won’t save money.”

UPDATE: Clinton has introduced her own gas-tax-holiday bill – S.2971.