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Author: Sarah Castro

Reviewed 9/22

House Narrowly Passes Immigration Response

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In a fairly narrow and mostly party line vote, the House passed a measure disapproving of Obama’s immigration action yesterday. It likely stops there: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says the Senate won’t take it up. 

Congressman Ted Yoho (R-FL) has lead the effort in the House meant to channel conservative anger and stop the Administration’s recently announced Executive Order on immigration. 

On November 20th, President Obama announced the US would extend legal status to an estimated 4 million people who have lived in the United States for at least five years and are parents of U.S. citizens or of lawful permanent residents. The move is designed to end deportations that separate families that have been together in the United States. This action will reinforce a 2011 prosecutorial discretion order telling customs and Justice Department officials to focus deportations on immigrants who threaten public safety or national security. The Executive Order will not go into effect until next year.

Late Thursday, House lawmakers passed the bill, HR 5759, the Preventing Executive Overreach on Immigration Bill, sponsored by Rep. Yoho, which would prohibit the administration from exempting or deferring from removal certain categories of undocumented immigrants. It also would prohibit the executive branch from treating such undocumented immigrants as if they were lawfully present, had lawful immigration status or providing them authorization to work legally.

In a 219-197 vote, Seven Republicans voted against it, three Democrats voted for it, and three Republicans voted present.

The bill and the vote is largely symbolic since Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has already announced that the Senate will not take up the measure.

Republican lawmakers are seeking other routes for nullifying the President’s executive order, including via a year-end fiscal year 2015 appropriations omnibus that would fully fund most of the government but provide only temporary spending for immigration-related activities as a way to revisit the immigration issue in the next Congress.

 

 

House to Pass Tax Extenders

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The House is set to consider HR 5771, the Tax Increase Prevention Act today. The measure would retroactively extend more than 50 expired tax breaks for one year. It would renew the individual deduction for state and local sales taxes and the equalization of tax-free benefits for transit and parking, the business research and development tax credit, bonus depreciation and other expensing rules along with the work opportunity tax credit.

Most of the renewed tax extenders, notably the R&D and tuition tax credits, expired at the end of calendar year 2013.  In total, Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) estimates that the tax extenders would reduce revenue by $41.6 billion over 10 years.

These provisions expired on December 31, 2013, but will receive a one year extension. Originally, Senate Democratic leaders began negotiations with House Republicans on a potential deal on extenders that would renew most for two years and make a number of provisions permanent — at an overall cost of more than $400 billion over 10 years. The White House, however, last week announced that the President would veto such a deal because, while it made certain business tax breaks permanent, it would not permanently extend tax provisions for the working poor such as the expanded earned income tax credit and child tax credit. These provisions were last extended in January 2013 in the American Taxpayer Relief Act, which was the measure to avert the fiscal cliff.

Tax reform is expected to be a central focus for the next Congress. In coming Chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) has announced his intention to examine and reform the nation’s tax structure.

Update:  The measure passed by a vote of 378-46.

NDAA Sent to Senate

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The House passed HR 3979 the FY15 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) by a vote of 300-119. The Senate is expected to take up and pass the measure next week.

The measure, which must be passed annually, authorizes all Pentagon and defense-related programs for the fiscal year. In FY15, the measure authorizes $577.1 billion for the Pentagon and defense-related programs for FY 2015, of which $63.7 billion is war-related funding — including $5.1 billion requested by the president to counter the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Defense spending continues to account for well over 50% of overall federal discretionary spending.

The bill extends the administration’s authority to train and equip Syrian rebels fighting both ISIS and the Assad regime and authorizes funding to help train the Iraqi Army in its fight against ISIS. It includes new provisions to combat sexual assault in the military, continues restrictions on the transfer of Guantánamo Bay detainees and allows the Pentagon to slightly reduce servicemembers’ housing allowances and impose a small copay for prescription drugs. It also includes a major package of non-defense-related land management provisions, including an appropriation for the PILT program and provisions creating new National Park units.

Additionally, the legislation includes strong language on increasing military cyber security.  These efforts come in the wake of two years of leaks from Defense Department insiders and cyberattacks on both the department and its contractors, including Manning and Snowden.

The measure would require the Defense Department to report back to Congress by March 2015 on its efforts to build both interim and long-term capabilities to continuously evaluate the security status of employees with access to classified information. Another provision in the bill is directly linked to a report the Senate Armed Services Committee released in September detailing what congressional leaders called a disturbing lack of communication on cyberattacks between agencies.

Additionally, the bill would add cybersecurity to the department’s list of major force programs. The department groups certain activities into those groups for budgeting and mission planning — the current list includes programs such as special operations, mobility forces and guard and reserve forces. Breaking cybersecurity out into its own major force would serve a symbolic move to show that the issue has been elevated to a high priority for the department.

 

Congressman Rush Holt to lead AAAS

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Congressman Rush D. Holt, Ph.D., who is retiring from the U.S. House of Representatives at the end of this year, has agreed to become chief executive officer and executive publisher of the Science family of journals for American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS),

He will succeed Alan I. Leshner, Ph.D., who had previously announced that he would be stepping down as AAAS CEO.

Congressman Holt has represented Central New Jersey (12th District) in Congress since 1999. He earned his B.A. degree in physics from Carleton College in Minnesota, and he completed his Master’s and doctoral degrees at New York University. In 1982-83, while he was teaching physics and public policy at Swarthmore College, Holt was selected by the American Physical Society to receive a highly competitive AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellowship. 

On Capitol Hill, Holt has established a long track record of advocacy for federal investment in research and development, science education, and innovation. Over the course of his career, Holt has held positions as a teacher and as an arms control expert at the U.S. State Department. From 1989 until 1998, he served as Assistant Director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, the largest research facility of Princeton University. As a result of his alternative-energy research, Holt in 1981 was issued a patent on an improved solar-pond technology for harnessing energy from sunlight. He also famously beat IBM supercomputer Watson in a “Jeopardy!” exhibition game intended to promote innovation.

Holt, a research physicist and former teacher, will serve as the 18th chief executive of the 166-year-old non-profit, non-partisan AAAS after his legislative term ends, during the association’s 2015 Annual Meeting, February 12-16, in San Jose, Ca.

HELP Committee Passes ESRA

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This morning, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee marked up a bill to reauthorize the Education Sciences Reform Act or ESRA. The Senate Committee passed voice vote a bipartisan substitute amendment that closely tracks the House-passed version of this bill, H.R. 4366, the Strengthening Education through Research Act. The House passed the bill in March of this year.

ESRA authorizes education research activities at the Institute of Education Sciences, which is the research arm of the Department of Education.

The Senate version of ESRA represents a bipartisan, bicameral agreement on H.R. 4366.  After it is approved by the full Senate, the House is expected to approve the Senate’s changes to the bill before it goes to the President.

The schedule for Senate floor action and final House action is not yet clear. It is unlikely the bill receive final Congressional approval before the November elections.