Where The Rubber Meets The Road (4/27/07)

As reported in last Sunday's Philadelphia Inquirer, here is how Philadelphia-area members of Congress were recorded on major roll-call votes last week.

House

D.C. congressional seat. The House passed, 241-177, and sent to the Senate a bill to expand the House from 435 to 437 seats by declaring the District of Columbia a congressional district and awarding Utah another House seat.

A yes vote was to pass the bill (HR 1905).

Voting yes: Robert E. Andrews (D., N.J.), Robert A. Brady (D., Pa.), Michael N. Castle (R., Del.), Charles W. Dent (R., Pa.), Patrick Murphy (D., Pa.), H. James Saxton (R., N.J.), Allyson Schwartz (D., Pa.), Joe Sestak (D., Pa.) and Christopher H. Smith (R., N.J.).

Voting no: Jim Gerlach (R., Pa.), Tim Holden (D., Pa.), Frank A. LoBiondo (R., N.J.) and Joseph R. Pitts (R., Pa.).

Not voting: Chaka Fattah (D., Pa.)

I had planned to ask Tim Holden why on earth he would oppose a U.S. House Seat with full privileges to the District of Columbia (as opposed to the one now in which Eleanor Holmes-Norton doesn’t have the authority to vote on anything), but his web site will not accept correspondence from outside of his district. Nice.

Small business aid. The House passed, 267-158, and sent to the Senate a bill that would spend $562 million over six years to make the Small Business Administration more responsive to companies harmed by natural disasters.

A yes vote was to pass the bill (HR 1361).

Voting yes: Andrews, Dent, Fattah, Gerlach, Holden, LoBiondo, Murphy, Saxton, Schwartz, Sestak and Smith.

Voting no: Castle and Pitts.

Not voting: Brady.

I guess Castle and Pitts aren’t expecting any flooding in Delaware and Lancaster County for the foreseeable future. I hope they’re right.

Iraq troop withdrawal. House members affirmed, 215-199, a previous vote that requires a March 1, 2008, start for withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq. This vote occurred in advance of House-Senate negotiations on a $100 billion war-funding bill (HR 1591) containing the deadline.

A yes vote was to affirm the troop-withdrawal deadline.

Voting yes: Andrews, Brady, Murphy, Schwartz and Sestak.

Voting no: Castle, Dent, Gerlach, Holden, LoBiondo, Pitts, Saxton and Smith.

Not voting: Fattah.

Your basic slam-dunk here, with the predictable partisan opposition…

Executive pay. The House passed, 269-134, and sent to the Senate a bill empowering shareholders of publicly traded companies to conduct nonbinding votes approving or disapproving of top executives' compensation.

A yes vote was to pass the bill (HR 1257).

Voting yes: Andrews, Dent, Holden, LoBiondo, Murphy, Saxton, Schwartz, Sestak and Smith.

Voting no: Castle and Pitts.

Not voting: Brady, Fattah and Gerlach.

I guess the securities in the portfolios for Castle and Pitts contains companies managed efficiently to achieve maximum profitability to the point where earnings accurately reflect the worth of their management (in other words, no Circuit City). How astute of them.

Of course, it would be nice if they gave a fig about the rest of us, though I know that’s WAY too much to expect for Pancake Joe (I hope Castle’s health is OK – that might be a reason for these awful votes).

Water projects. The House passed, 394-25, a bill authorizing $14 billion over several years for nearly 700 Army Corps of Engineers projects, such as navigation, flood control and shoreline protection.

A yes vote was to pass the bill (HR 1495).

Voting yes: Andrews, Brady, Castle, Dent, Gerlach, Holden, LoBiondo, Murphy, Pitts, Saxton, Schwartz, Sestak and Smith.

Not voting: Fattah.

Senate

Medicare drug prices. Voting 55-42, the Senate failed to reach the 60 votes needed to advance a bill requiring the U.S. government to use its purchasing power to achieve lower prices in the Medicare prescription-drug plan.

All Philadelphia-area senators voted to advance the bill (S 3).

Intelligence budget. The Senate failed, 50-45, to reach the 60 votes needed to end a GOP filibuster blocking action on the fiscal 2007 intelligence budget. The bill (S 372) would require the CIA to tell Congress the locations of its secret prisons abroad and identify interrogation techniques.

A yes vote was to advance the bill.

Voting yes: Thomas Carper (D., Del.), Bob Casey (D., Pa.), Frank Lautenberg (D., N.J.) and Robert Menendez (D., N.J.).

Voting no: Arlen Specter (R., Pa.).

Not voting: Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D., Del.).

I admire what this bill is trying to achieve, but I don’t think this will ever be passed; the part about the interrogation techniques is really a reach. Good try by the Dems, though, to try and bring an element of sanity to what should be our intelligent prosecution of the legitimate war or terror.

And by the way, screw you, Arlen.

This week, both chambers passed the conference report of the bill funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and setting a timetable for withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq.