Where The Rubber Meets The Road (4/18/08)

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

U.S.-Colombia trade. By a vote of 224-195, the House delayed indefinitely a U.S.-Colombia free-trade agreement that President Bush had sent to Capitol Hill under "fast-track" legislative rules. This vote on H Res 1092 canceled a deadline in those rules for the House to approve or reject the trade pact. The deferral did not require Senate or presidential concurrence and took effect immediately.

A yes vote was to delay the trade agreement.

Voting yes: Robert A. Brady (D., Pa.), Chaka Fattah (D., Pa.), Tim Holden (D., Pa.), Patrick Murphy (D., Pa.), Allyson Schwartz (D., Pa.), and Joe Sestak (D., Pa.).

Voting no: Michael N. Castle (R., Del.), Charles W. Dent (R., Pa.), Jim Gerlach (R., Pa.) Frank A. LoBiondo (R., N.J.), Joseph R. Pitts (R., Pa.), and Christopher H. Smith (R., N.J.).

Not voting: Robert E. Andrews (D., N.J.).

(I guess Andrews was too busy sucking up to North Jersey fat cats trying to raise money so he can unseat Frank Lautenberg. As I said earlier, that’s his right, but Lautenberg has more integrity in his pinky than Andrews has in his whole body.)

More to the point, here and here are posts from David Sirota to commemorate what will be the 94th anniversary of the Ludlow, CO mining massacre on April 20th; a government militia slaughtered union representatives trying to organize coal miners there in 1914.

What does that have to do with the Colombia “free trade” agreement? Oh, just about everything. As Sirota tells us in Part One…

Colombia resembles Colorado in the early 20th century, only with more frequent slaughters. In the last two decades, over 2,500 Colombian labor organizers have been assassinated, making Colombia the world's most dangerous place for unionists.

…

This situation, like Ludlow, developed not in spite of the governing elite, but thanks to it. As The Washington Post reports, Colombia's "most influential political, military and business figures helped build" the killing machine. Recently, prosecutors connected these paramilitaries to Colombian President Alvaro Uribe's allies.

Colombian labor leaders have begged the White House to drop the deal, saying it will undermine their struggle for human rights by validating Uribe's thug-ocracy. Nonetheless, President Bush bolstered Uribe with a pact giving corporations incentives to leave America for the corpse-strewn pastures of Colombia — a union hater's paradise.

Sirota also criticizes Chiquita Brands for collaborating in the anti-union violence; to be fair, I should note that I defended the company in an earlier post because their CEO had brought his concerns about working with a group dubbed a terrorist organization to Mike Chertoff, who, in typical fashion, ignored them, ultimately leading to an action against Chiquita that possibly could have been avoided (embedded in this post - I don’t have an update on that right now). I didn’t mean to imply that the company was innocent, but only that there were other corporate offenders we could have pursued that operate in that country instead.

it may be inevitable that we’ll have to deal with these characters in Colombia in the event that there’s no substantive changes among them or the policy of their government (sorry, but have to plan for that), but to me, that still does not mean this agreement should be ratified any earlier than January 21, 2009 (if at all), particularly when that country’s labor leaders are asking us not to because it would legitimize Uribe and his tactics.

And if the agreement doesn’t get passed, then maybe it will mean that former President Bill Clinton and/or Mark Penn won’t get paid for lobbying on Colombia’s behalf. I think that would be fair – never justifiable to sell out American workers, no matter who we’re talking about.

U.S. landscape conservation. The House voted 278-140 to give force of law to an eight-year-old program designed to preserve landscapes of national significance on Bureau of Land Management acreage in the West. The bill (HR 2016) would codify what are now administrative protections for landscapes of exceptional ecological, cultural or scientific value on the agency's 27 million acres.

A yes vote was to pass the bill.

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

Voting no: Pitts.

This week’s obligatory stupid “No” vote by Joe Pitts (and to help Bruce Slater, click here - I LOVE the idea of writing in Bruce's name on the Republican ballots - genius!).

Senate

Housing relief package. In an 84-12 vote, the Senate sent the House a bill (HR 3221) to help mortgage holders, communities and businesses cope with the U.S. housing collapse at a projected cost of $15 billion over 10 years. The bill authorizes $6 billion in tax rebates to homebuilders and other businesses, $150 million for credit counseling to head off foreclosures, and $4 billion for use by localities to buy empty houses.

A yes vote was to pass the bill.

Voting yes: Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D., Del.), Thomas Carper (D., Del.), Bob Casey (D., Pa.), Frank Lautenberg (D., N.J.), Robert Menendez (D., N.J.), and Arlen Specter (R., Pa.).

Renewable-energy tax credits. Voting 88-8, the Senate expanded HR 3221 (above) to extend renewable-energy tax credits due to expire at year's end. The amendment would add about $6 billion over 10 years to the national debt. The tax incentives are designed, in part, to promote energy from sources such as the sun, wind, earth and crops and promote the manufacture of more energy-efficient homes, buildings and appliances.

A yes vote backed the amendment.

Voting yes: Biden, Casey, Lautenberg, Menendez, Specter.

Voting no: Carper.

He casts a “No” vote like this and then actually has the gall to promote Earth Day – what planet does Tom Carper live on?

Federal land inventory. Voting 30-63, the Senate refused to require the federal government to start publishing an online inventory of all land it owns and the cost of administering it, with the database to be updated annually. This amendment was offered to a noncontroversial bill (S 2739) on public lands that was later passed.

A yes vote backed the amendment.

Voting yes: Specter.

Voting no: Carper, Casey, Biden, Lautenberg and Menendez.

How thoughtful of Tom Coburn to try and add this provision to the bill (and thank you, Inky, for deciding for me that S 2739 is “noncontroversial,” by the way) whereby the head of OMB would have to report every year with an inventory on all federal lands; God willing, it will be an OMB director for a Dem president starting next year (one would wonder why Coburn failed to insist on this for Bushco, with Jim Nussle being so talented and all).

This week, the House took up bills on reforming student loans, forgiving poor countries' debt, and controlling beach pollution. The Senate debated a highway bill.