The House was unable to pass a measure to extend the expanded jobless benefits through February even though the unemployment rate remains at nearly 10 percent. But Democratic leaders brought the bill to the floor under suspension of the rules, which requires a two-thirds vote for passage.
With the House gone for the Thanksgiving recess, and Senate leaders still struggling to put together a strategy for the December portion of the lame-duck session, the benefits are expected to lapse on Nov. 30, as they did earlier this year, before lawmakers moved to renew them retroactively.
Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) said that he is concerned that “pontificating, preaching about deficits” is threatening a program that, economists argue, provides a particularly high bang for the buck in terms of getting money into people’s hands and spurring economic activity.“Going back many years, the argument has always been made that even if you have to deficit spend for unemployment insurance in the midst of a really brutal economy for a lot of people, that can be supported because you’re helping someone get from here to there get from joblessness to a job and you’re providing a jump-starting effect that helps the economy,” Casey said.
The last renewal of jobless benefits, which was not offset, just barely overcame a GOP filibuster in the Senate on a 60-40 vote, with Democrat Ben Nelson of Nebraska voting no and the two Republican moderates from Maine, Olympia J. Snowe and Susan Collins, providing the deciding votes. Senate Democratic leaders argue that jobless benefits should not have to be offset. But this week, Snowe said that she is concerned about the “open-endedness” of Congress’ support for expanded jobless benefits, and the length of time for which they’re being extended. “I think we need to revisit some of those issues, and how we pay for it,” she said.
On Thursday, 143 members of the House Republican caucus, which will control that chamber in January, opposed the $12 billion unemployment insurance extender bill on the floor, making a cost argument that may prove fatal. Twenty-one Republicans voted yes.“The sad thing, Madam Speaker, is this—we could extend unemployment benefits and pay for it. This is not a hard one. There are harder decisions coming with the debt our country is facing and economic uncertainty,” Rep. Charles Boustany Jr. (R-LA) said on the House floor.
For more information, please visit www.nwyc.com or email me at gms@yourvotecountspittsburgh.com.
Monday, November 22, 2010
Bill to reach settlement with Black farmers and American Indians
The Senate is expected to approve $1.15 billion to fund a settlement initially reached between the Agriculture Department and minority farmers more than a decade ago. The legislation will pair an extension of a major welfare program with the settlement of longstanding claims that the federal government mismanaged funds owed to American Indians and discriminated against black farmers.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is seeking unanimous consent to clear the measure.
The 1997 Pigford v. Glickman case against the U.S. Agriculture Department was settled out of court 11 years ago. Qualified farmers are set to receive $50,000 each to settle the claim pertaining to racial bias, under a federal judge’s terms dating back to 1999.
“This is much long overdue justice for black farmers,” said John Boyd, founder and president of the National Black Farmers Association.
The bill would also include settlements dealing with Native American water rights sought by Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ).
It would extend Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), the basic federal welfare program, through September 30, 2011, and extend for six months a supplemental TANF grant program for states with high population growth or historically below-average welfare grants.
The Senate failed several times to ratify agreements reached in December 2009 between the Interior Department and American Indian plaintiffs in the Cobell v. Salazar class action lawsuit, and in February 2010 between the Agriculture Department and representatives for black farmers.The settlements were dropped from two House-passed bills that were revised to win Senate passage. In August, Wyoming Republican John Barrasso stopped action on a stand-alone Senate bill to ratify the settlements, raising objections to attorney fees and other items in the Cobell agreement.
Coburn has now been satisfied that the bill is budget-neutral, spokesman John Hart said Thursday. Budgetary offsets would come from customs fees, a fund for Indian safety and health and rescissions from the Women, Infants and Children nutrition program.
The Interior Department agreement would provide $3.4 billion to settle allegations that the agency mismanaged trust accounts and cheated thousands of American Indians out of their share of revenue generated by leasing their land.
For more information, please visit www.nwyc.com or email me at gms@yourvotecountspittsburgh.com.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is seeking unanimous consent to clear the measure.
The 1997 Pigford v. Glickman case against the U.S. Agriculture Department was settled out of court 11 years ago. Qualified farmers are set to receive $50,000 each to settle the claim pertaining to racial bias, under a federal judge’s terms dating back to 1999.
“This is much long overdue justice for black farmers,” said John Boyd, founder and president of the National Black Farmers Association.
The bill would also include settlements dealing with Native American water rights sought by Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ).
It would extend Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), the basic federal welfare program, through September 30, 2011, and extend for six months a supplemental TANF grant program for states with high population growth or historically below-average welfare grants.
The Senate failed several times to ratify agreements reached in December 2009 between the Interior Department and American Indian plaintiffs in the Cobell v. Salazar class action lawsuit, and in February 2010 between the Agriculture Department and representatives for black farmers.The settlements were dropped from two House-passed bills that were revised to win Senate passage. In August, Wyoming Republican John Barrasso stopped action on a stand-alone Senate bill to ratify the settlements, raising objections to attorney fees and other items in the Cobell agreement.
Coburn has now been satisfied that the bill is budget-neutral, spokesman John Hart said Thursday. Budgetary offsets would come from customs fees, a fund for Indian safety and health and rescissions from the Women, Infants and Children nutrition program.
The Interior Department agreement would provide $3.4 billion to settle allegations that the agency mismanaged trust accounts and cheated thousands of American Indians out of their share of revenue generated by leasing their land.
For more information, please visit www.nwyc.com or email me at gms@yourvotecountspittsburgh.com.
Airport Scanners May Pose Many Concerns
Many congressmen are asking the Transportation Security Administration to reconsider the “enhanced pat down” practice in Airports.
“While we agree that security measures should be enhanced in the wake of recent attempted terrorist attacks on the aviation system, we are concerned about new enhanced pat down screening protocols and urge you to reconsider the utilization of these protocols,” said House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS) and Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), chairwoman of the subcommittee on Transportation Security and Infrastructure Protection in a letter sent to TSA head John S. Pistole Friday.
Transportation and Infrastructure Committee ranking Republican John L. Mica (R-FL) and Thomas E. Petri (R-WI) ranking member of the Aviation Subcommittee, struck a similar note in their own note to Pistole.
“While the purpose behind the recent change in procedures is understandable, we have concerns that the TSA is not achieving the proper balance between aviation security and the privacy rights of United States citizens,” they wrote.
Mica and Petri said the use of pat-down procedure—which TSA uses for passengers who decline to pass through whole-body image scanners—is an example of the agency’s tendency to approach threats in a reactive, rather than proactive manner.The GOP lawmakers noted that the last terrorist incident involving a passenger smuggling explosives aboard—Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s attempt at detonating a plane above Detroit on Christmas—took place 11 months ago.
Mica and Petri stated that TSA should only use pat-downs in cases of suspicious behavior, or when screening machines are unable to rule out a threat. They continued that the Department of Homeland Security should be working on initiatives such as intelligence, threat analysis and integration of more biometrics technology, rather than emphasizing physical screening.
In September, Thompson and Jackson Lee’s committee expressed concerns about the procedure. “Before implementing this new, more invasive pat-down procedure, as a preliminary matter, TSA should have had a conversation with the American public about the need for these changes,” they wrote. “Even before that conversation, TSA should have endeavored to ensure that these changes did not run afoul of privacy and civil liberties.”
Also facing controversy are the whole body imagers in airports. The TSA has approved two types of whole body imagers for use in airports—“millimeter wave” units from L-3, which use high-frequency radio waves, and “backscatter” unites from Rapiscan, which use extremely small doses of X-rays. While the Food and Drug Administration has said that the dose from one of the backscatter units is so low that it presents an extremely low risk, some in the medical community have expressed concerns about the effects of repeated exposure—a question that John D. Dingell(D-MI) posed in his letter.
He wrote to TSA, “I do not believe security measures like [Advances Imaging Technology] units should be rushed into use without a full and thorough examination on the impact of their use on human health,” he said.
“My concern about this assessment is it does not address the question of what the potential long-term health impact would be for those who have prolonged exposure to screenings either through frequent travel, by nature of their employment or [those] vulnerable to radiation exposure due to immune system deficiencies,” Dingell wrote.
Meanwhile, TSA has announced that it has taken steps to streamline airport security for the pilots of U.S. airlines. The agency plans to eventually phase in a nationwide secure access system for pilots.
“Pilots are trusted partners who ensure the safety of millions of passengers flying every day,” Pistole said in a joint release with several pilots’ associations. “Allowing these uniformed pilots, whose identity has been verified, to go through expedited screening at the checkpoint just makes sense for smart security and an efficient use of our resources.”
For more information, please visit www.nwyc.com or email me at gms@yourvotecountspittsburgh.com.
“While we agree that security measures should be enhanced in the wake of recent attempted terrorist attacks on the aviation system, we are concerned about new enhanced pat down screening protocols and urge you to reconsider the utilization of these protocols,” said House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS) and Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), chairwoman of the subcommittee on Transportation Security and Infrastructure Protection in a letter sent to TSA head John S. Pistole Friday.
Transportation and Infrastructure Committee ranking Republican John L. Mica (R-FL) and Thomas E. Petri (R-WI) ranking member of the Aviation Subcommittee, struck a similar note in their own note to Pistole.
“While the purpose behind the recent change in procedures is understandable, we have concerns that the TSA is not achieving the proper balance between aviation security and the privacy rights of United States citizens,” they wrote.
Mica and Petri said the use of pat-down procedure—which TSA uses for passengers who decline to pass through whole-body image scanners—is an example of the agency’s tendency to approach threats in a reactive, rather than proactive manner.The GOP lawmakers noted that the last terrorist incident involving a passenger smuggling explosives aboard—Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s attempt at detonating a plane above Detroit on Christmas—took place 11 months ago.
Mica and Petri stated that TSA should only use pat-downs in cases of suspicious behavior, or when screening machines are unable to rule out a threat. They continued that the Department of Homeland Security should be working on initiatives such as intelligence, threat analysis and integration of more biometrics technology, rather than emphasizing physical screening.
In September, Thompson and Jackson Lee’s committee expressed concerns about the procedure. “Before implementing this new, more invasive pat-down procedure, as a preliminary matter, TSA should have had a conversation with the American public about the need for these changes,” they wrote. “Even before that conversation, TSA should have endeavored to ensure that these changes did not run afoul of privacy and civil liberties.”
Also facing controversy are the whole body imagers in airports. The TSA has approved two types of whole body imagers for use in airports—“millimeter wave” units from L-3, which use high-frequency radio waves, and “backscatter” unites from Rapiscan, which use extremely small doses of X-rays. While the Food and Drug Administration has said that the dose from one of the backscatter units is so low that it presents an extremely low risk, some in the medical community have expressed concerns about the effects of repeated exposure—a question that John D. Dingell(D-MI) posed in his letter.
He wrote to TSA, “I do not believe security measures like [Advances Imaging Technology] units should be rushed into use without a full and thorough examination on the impact of their use on human health,” he said.
“My concern about this assessment is it does not address the question of what the potential long-term health impact would be for those who have prolonged exposure to screenings either through frequent travel, by nature of their employment or [those] vulnerable to radiation exposure due to immune system deficiencies,” Dingell wrote.
Meanwhile, TSA has announced that it has taken steps to streamline airport security for the pilots of U.S. airlines. The agency plans to eventually phase in a nationwide secure access system for pilots.
“Pilots are trusted partners who ensure the safety of millions of passengers flying every day,” Pistole said in a joint release with several pilots’ associations. “Allowing these uniformed pilots, whose identity has been verified, to go through expedited screening at the checkpoint just makes sense for smart security and an efficient use of our resources.”
For more information, please visit www.nwyc.com or email me at gms@yourvotecountspittsburgh.com.
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