This Week In Congress (TWIC)
Your One Stop Shop For Learning What Our Congress Critters Are Up To!
As you may already know, every week Congress is in session (usually on Sunday evening or Monday morning, but this time I’m early, because like the Congress Critters, I’m eager to start the August Recess) I recap the previous week’s important legislative and committee activity and look ahead to what Congress has planned for the coming week, with my 2 cents of opinion from time to time of course.
Hope you find it both informative and worthy of recommending and discussion in the comments section.
Here Are The Previous Weeks’ Headlines:
House & Senate Pass BFD Inflation Reduction Act!
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Jan. 6 Committee Interviewing Former Trump Cabinet Members!
Legislative Activity -
House:
1. 8/12/22 — Senate Substitute Amendment 5194 the Inflation Reduction Act (S. 5194)to House Resolution 5376 (H.R. 5376), — Vote on Motion to Concur in the Senate Amendment, as amended, to (H.R. 5376) — A bill to provide for reconciliation pursuant to title II of S. Con. Res. 14. (You can read a nice little one page summary of the IRA HERE curtesy of Senate Democrats, or if you really want to jump into the weeds of the IRA, you can read the Full Text, all 730 pages of the Inflation Reduction Act (S. 5194) HERE.)
Democrats- 220 Yes 0 No 0 Present 0 Not Voting
Republicans- 0 Yes 207 No 0 Present 4 Not Voting
Independents- 0 Yes 0 No 0 Present 0 Not Voting
Totals- 220 Yes 207 No 0 Present 4 Not Voting
PASSED
Voting Details HERE.
Details & Commentary — Chronologically, I am presenting this in reverse order since the Senate (below) passed the amended Bill first. But I always start with the House, so I didn’t want to break the usual order.
I will cover some of the legislative process that got this Bill to the House under the Senate section below. But now since it has passed the House and is on its way to the President’s desk, I thought I would delve a little bit into what’s in this historic piece of legislation. While the one page summary I linked to above is nice, it doesn’t provide a lot of detail. On the other hand, reading the Bill by slogging through all 730 pages of the Bill on the official Congressional page I linked to above, is probably not something most folks will want to do, unless you’re REALLY, REALLY Bored. Alternatively, Senate Democrats have done those of us who want a little more detail, but don’t want to spend our lives reading all 730 pages, a favor. Via this Senate Democrats Page put out by Dem. Leadership, we can access summaries of each individual aspect of the Bill. Here are the individual links:
Summaries
Please take a few minutes to read through these summaries. They will give you a sense of all the good things in this Bill and what an historic accomplishment our Democratic Congress has achieved! BTW, while named the “Inflation Reduction Act” reducing inflation is not the primary focus of this Bill, although there are some long term inflation reduction aspects to it. So the name doesn’t really fit what the Bill is or does, but if the name makes Manchin and middle-of-the-road voters happy so-be-it. Besides, Republicans did much worse when they were naming their Bills.
On the final vote itself, no surprises. Straight Party line vote with all Democrats voting yeah, and not a single Republican. Will make for great Dem. campaign ads!
Senate:
Legislation — Below are the votes taken on some of the significant amendments, both passed and rejected, pertaining to the Inflation Reduction Act, as well as the vote on the final Bill.
1. 8/7/22 — House Resolution 5376 (H.R. 5376), Senate Substitute Amendment 5194 the Inflation Reduction Act (S. 5194) - Vote on Motion to waive all applicable budgetary discipline with respect to amendment S. 5194, as modified — This Motion was to waive budgetary requirements in the Budget Reconciliation Rules in order to allow the provision to cap Insulin Costs at $35 per month for people with private insurance, to remain a part of S. 5194 Inflation Reduction Act.
Democrats- 48 Yes 0 No 0 Present 0 Not Voting
Republicans- 7 Yes 43 No 0 Present 0 Not Voting
Independents- 2 Yes 0 No 0 Present 0 Not Voting
Totals- 57 Yes 43 No 0 Present 0 Not Voting
FAILED (60 Votes Needed To Pass)
Voting Details HERE.
2. 8/7/22 — House Resolution 5376 (H.R. 5376), Senate Substitute Amendment 5194 the Inflation Reduction Act (S. 5194) - Vote on Senate Amendment 5472 (S.Amdt. 5472) Thune Amendment — Amendment to remove harmful small business taxes, and for other purposes. (You can read the Full Text of S.Amdt. 5472 HERE.)
Democrats- 7 Yes 41 No 0 Present 0 Not Voting
Republicans- 50 Yes 0 No 0 Present o Not Voting
Independents- 0 Yes 2 No 0 Present 0 Not Voting
Totals- 57 Yes 43 No 0 Present 0 Not Voting
AGREED TO
Voting Details HERE.
3. 8/7/22 — House Resolution 5376 (H.R. 5376), Senate Substitute Amendment 5194 the Inflation Reduction Act (S. 5194) - Vote on Senate Amendment 5488 (S.Amdt. 5488) Warner Amendment — Amendment to strike the extension of the limitation on State and local taxes and extend the limitation on excess business losses of noncorporate taxpayers, and for other purposes. (You can read the Full Text of S.Amdt. 5488 HERE.)
Democrats- 48 Yes 0 No 0 Present 0 Not Voting
Republicans- 50 Yes 0 No 0 Present o Not Voting
Independents- 2 Yes 0 No 0 Present 0 Not Voting
VP- 1 Yes
Totals- 51 Yes 50 No 0 Present 0 Not Voting
AGREED TO
Voting Details HERE.
4. 8/7/22 — House Resolution 5376 (H.R. 5376), Senate Substitute Amendment 5194 the Inflation Reduction Act (S. 5194) — Vote on final passage of the Senate Substitute Amendment (S. 5194) the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), as amended, to (H.R. 5376) — A bill to provide for reconciliation pursuant to title II of S. Con. Res. 14. (You can read a nice little one page summary of the IRA HERE curtesy of Senate Democrats, or if you really want to jump into the weeds of the IRA, you can read the Full Text, all 730 pages of the Inflation Reduction Act (S. 5194) HERE.)
Democrats- 48 Yes 0 No 0 Present 0 Not Voting
Republicans- 50 Yes 0 No 0 Present o Not Voting
Independents- 2 Yes 0 No 0 Present 0 Not Voting
VP- 1 Yes
Totals- 51 Yes 50 No 0 Present 0 Not Voting
PASSED
Voting Details HERE.
Details & Commentary — For those interested in delving into the legislative sausage making that was used to produce the Inflation Reduction Act, probably almost no one, I will delve into it a little here. If you’re squeamish about watching legislative sausage process, please feel free to skip the next few paragraphs.
First off, we start with House Bill H.R. 5376 which is the original Reconciliation Bill the House passed that Manchin and Sinema refused to vote for months ago. So Schumer eventually cobbled together Senate Substitute Amendment 5194 (S. 5194) which basically contained whatever Manchin would vote for, by cutting and revising the House Bill. S. 5194 was then further revised to satisfy Sinema and get her vote, and also I suspect some further revisions suggested by the Senate Parliamentarian to satisfy Budget Reconciliation Rules (Rules that exempt the Bill from the filibuster and allow it to be passed by a simple majority vote in the Senate, which many of you probably already knew), before it hit the Senate floor.
Debate was started on the Senate Substitute Amendment (S. 5194), the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) by a 50-50 Senate vote, with the VP casting the tie-breaking vote. This began 20 hours of debate prescribed by Senate Reconciliation Rules, that fortunately was cut to 4 hours when Republicans allowed a Dem. Unanimous Consent request without objection. This was the first indication that Republican Senators were more interested in getting out of town for the August recess than delaying passage of the amended Bill.
As soon as debate ended, the “Vote-A-Rama” began, which is offering and voting on an unlimited number of amendments/motions, again as prescribed by Senate Reconciliation Rules. This started the process of the Republicans putting forth around 100 amendments, some of which grouped for voting purposes, all intended to split off a Democrat and kill the Bill in the end. Fortunately, all 50 Dems./Indys held together on almost all of these votes to result in a 50-50 tie and the failure of these GOP Poison Pill amendments/motions.
During the “Vote-A-Rama”, there was one motion made by Democrats (#1 above). This resulted from the Senate Parliamentarian, in her infinite wisdom, recommending that the $35 per month cap on Insulin for people with private insurance didn’t conform to Budget Reconciliation Rules (specifically the “Byrd Rule” named after Senator Byrd its author) and could not be passed by simple majority vote. She did however, not object to the same cap remaining in the Bill for persons with Medicare. The reason, not to sound like I’m defending her decision, is that Budget Reconciliation can only be used for things that have an effect on the Federal Budget. Her apparent logic, which I can somewhat accept, is that capping insulin costs for people with private insurance has no discernable effect on the Federal Budget, while capping insulin costs for people on Medicare, a Federal program, does. So in an attempt to keep the Insulin cap for people under 65 in the Bill, Dems. put forth a Motion to waive the Budget Rules with respect to this private Insulin cap. This Motion required 60 votes to pass, analogous to a Cloture Vote to end a filibuster. It got only 57, so it failed. But this was still a smart move on Schumer’s part, because as I have often said in such circumstances, There is Value In Failure. Yes, he could have tried to overrule the Senate Parliamentarian’s recommendation which could be done by a simple majority vote, but it was unlikely to get all 50 Dem. votes since Manchin and Sinema regard rulings by the Parliamentarian as messages from God carved on stone tablets. So not only would we lose, it would force Manchin and Sinema to take votes they did NOT want to take and split Dem. unity. But by using the 60 vote threshold to waive the rule, he got 43 Senate Republicans to voting against the Insulin Price Cap, which is political GOLD in terms of the mid-terms. Brilliant move on Chuck’s part. BTW, I did hear a rumor that Schumer will bring up the private Insulin Cap as a separate Bill in the Fall under regular order. Meaning that it could pass if 3 more Republicans vote for Cloture, or it could fail again, and again allowing Dems. to beat the GOP over the head with the second failed vote.
Moving on, at the last minute Republican Senator Thune offered a “Poison Pill” amendment that actually passed (#2 above). It was S. Amdt. 5472, which dealt with the tax code. As best I can tell it would exempt certain “small” businesses from the 15% minimum tax and would pay for the loss of tax revenue by extending the limitation on State and Local tax deductions (passed by the Trump tax act) by an additional year. Now Sinema voted for this amendment since the exemption to the 15% minimum tax on certain corporations was part of her deal with Schumer (6 other Dems. joined her likely for fear that they would be falsely labelled as voting for a tax increase). However, the poison in this pill amendment was the extension of the limit on State and Local tax deductions. That’s because House Democrats from Blue States where these deductions used to save taxpayers a ton of money since Blue States pay higher State and Local taxes, wanted the limit of these deductions ended with this Reconciliation Bill. While they were willing to except that the Bill would not end the deduction limit, many House Democrats were certainly not going to vote to extend it. Thus, this amendment could have very well killed the Bill in the House.
So in comes Dem. Senator Warner to the rescue with S. Amdt. 5488. This amendment to the Thune amendment, strikes the extension of the limitation on State and local taxes thus removing the poison from the Thune pill, and extend the limitation on excess business losses of noncorporate taxpayers as an alternative pay-for for the corporate tax exemption in the Thune amendment. It passed by a 50-50 Senate vote, with the VP casting the tie-breaking vote, making all Dems. happy and insuring the passage of the final Bill. It was truly a last minute brilliant legislative jujitsu move on the part of Senate Dems.
With the Thune amendment problem resolved, the final vote on Senate passage of the Substitute Amendment, the IRA, passed by a 50-50 Senate vote, with the VP casting the tie-breaking vote.
Sure this leaves out a lot of good stuff that was in the previous BBB Bill, but make no mistake this is an historically impactful piece of legislation in terms of taxes, health and climate, and deserves its BFD label.
Nominations -none
Committee Activity:
House:
House Jan. 6 Select Committee:
- 8/11/22 — Committee Meets With Trump’s Cabinet — Last week the Committee met with several former members of Trump’s Cabinet. Per CNN:
The House select committee investigating January 6, 2021, has recently interviewed former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao and has been in talks with former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos as well as former National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien, multiple sources tell CNN. Chao and DeVos, both members of former President Donald Trump's Cabinet, resigned a day after the attack on the US Capitol and discussed invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from power.
News of Chao's cooperation, and the committee's discussions with DeVos and O'Brien have not been previously reported. O'Brien is expected to appear virtually before the panel on Friday, according to a source familiar with the probe. CNN has reached out to O'Brien.
The development comes after former Secretary of State
Mike Pompeo met with the panel on Tuesday. The 25th Amendment was a topic of focus during Pompeo's meeting, CNN previously reported.
Like Pompeo, DeVos and Chao are known to have explored the idea of possibly removing Trump from power via the 25th Amendment in the immediate aftermath of the January 6 attack. While Pompeo served out his tenure as Secretary of State, DeVos and Chao both sent letters of resignation to Trump on January 7.
Next Week in Congress: Nothing officially going on as both the Senate and House are on August recess.
Hope you enjoyed!
But before I leave for Recess, I would urge you all to take pleasure in the things Congress accomplished this year, and avoid commiserating over the things Congress did not accomplish.
See you in September, or maybe sooner?