Today, the Senate voted 78-17 to confirm Sylvia Mathews Burwell as secretary of Health and Human Services. Burwell replaces Kathleen Sebelius, who stepped down earlier this year.
Category: On the Hill
House Passes CJS, Senate Considers Its Version Next Week
The House passed the FY15 Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations bill after 1 am this morning. The measure passed by a vote of 321-87. This legislation provides a 3.3% increase for NSF funding over FY14 levels. It also provides ample funding for science programs at NASA.
Earlier in the evening, the House considered an amendment by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), the Chairman of the House Science Committee. The amendment proposed to reduce funding for the Social, Behavioral and Economic Science’s Directorate by $15.35 million research and related activities, and added to alternate research within the National Science Foundation portfolio. The amendment is similar to an amendment Smith added to the FIRST Act earlier in the week. The Smith Amendment passed by a vote of 208-201 (18 Republicans voted against and 5 Democrats voted for the amendment).
Next week, June 3rd, the Senate Appropriations Committee will take up its version of the FY Commerce, Justice, Science bill.
Larsen Introduces Bill to Protect Bereaved Student Borrowers
Today, Congressman Rick Larsen (D-WA) introduced the Bereaved Student Borrowers Act. The bill is designed to protect grieving students and students facing family hardship from auto-defaulting on their private student loans and to get better access to information about cosigner release requirements. The bill also prohibits lenders from reporting an auto-default as a result of cosigner death or bankruptcy to credit reporting companies and stops these companies from including this information on their reports.
This issue was brought to light by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which identified significant issues facing private student loan borrowers in a recent quarterly report. As of 2011, approximately 90 percent of private student loans had cosigners, and many of these loan contracts contain clauses allowing the loan to be accelerated into default upon death or bankruptcy of a cosigner, often a parent or grandparent, even when students are making loan payments on time.
The bill has eight original cosponsors, including Reps. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), Niki Tsongas (D-MA), Suzan DelBene (D-WA), Pedro Pierluisi, Denny Heck (D-WA), André Carson (D-IN), William Enyart (D-IL), Peter Welch (D-VT), and James Moran (D-VA).
A fact sheet on the bill can be found here.
Welcome Back Congress!
Members of Congress return to Washington, DC today after a two-week recess period. Today marks a nine-week work period where at least one chamber will be in session. But the House will recess again in two weeks, the Senate will take off all of Memorial Day week, and the House will take another recess the first week in June. Then both chambers will recess for the week of Fourth of July. After that, there are just four weeks until the five-week August recess, which stretching through the first week in September. That break will be followed by maybe as few as a dozen working days before early October when the House leadership has promised members they can go home to campaign full time for the mid-term elections. The Senate is likely to follow suit.
That’s not much time for genuine legislating, especially given that both parties plan to spend much of the time using the Capitol as a sound stage for their political messaging.
This week, the House is expected to begin considering the first two FY2015 appropriations bills of the season: Military Construction-VA and Legislative Branch. The Commerce-Science-Justice measure will be next in the queue, with the House Appropriations subcommittee taking it up Wednesday. Senate appropriators are moving more slowly on their bills but we expect to see a lot of action on appropriations measures between now and the August recess period.
Senate Passes House Bill to Raise Debt Ceiling
With an impending snow storm as a powerful motivator, the Senate passed the House’s bill to suspend the debt ceiling until March 15, 2015 by a vote of 55-42.
Earlier this week, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas vowed to filibuster the measure since the House Republicans “caved to President Obama” and were unable extract to any spending cuts or other concessions to pass the bill. Such a filibuster could have caused a repeat of last Fall’s government shutdown.
However, much of the Senate’s inclination to stand tough went by the wayside as 5 plus inches of snow have been forecasted for the DC region. Both chambers of Congress have been eager to get out of town this afternoon given the storm hitting the eastern seaboard and the amount of snow that’s expected to fall in the Washington area.
The Senate voted 67-31 to end a debate on the legislation or end any filibuster threatened by Senator Cruz. The vote took nearly an hour, but cleared the way to a vote on final passage with a simple majority threshold. A dozen Republicans voted with Democrats to end the filibuster after the Senate Republican Leadership McConnell and Cornyn led the way. Republicans joining Democrats included, John Barrasso of Wyoming, Susan Collins of Maine, Bob Corker of Tennessee, Jeff Flake of Arizona, Orrin Hatch of Utah, Mike Johanns of Nebraska, Mark Kirk of Illinois, John McCain of Arizona, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and John Thune of South Dakota.
Both Washington Senators Murray and Cantwell voted to end the debate and voted for the suspension of the debt ceiling.