Where The Rubber Meets The Road (6/26/09)

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

Voting 226-202, the House approved the conference report on a bill (HR 2346) to appropriate $80 billion through Sept. 30 for U.S. combat operations and $26 billion for nonmilitary programs. The bill was backed by 221 Democrats and five Republicans and opposed by 170 Republicans and 32 Democrats. Republicans objected mainly to the bill's $5 billion outlay for the International Monetary Fund, and most Democratic foes were casting antiwar votes.

A yes vote was to approve the conference report.

Voting yes: John Adler (D., N.J.), Robert E. Andrews (D., N.J.), Robert A. Brady (D., Pa.), Chaka Fattah (D., Pa.), Tim Holden (D., Pa.), Patrick Murphy (D., Pa.), Allyson Y. 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.).

This was held up for a time because of the Lieberman-Graham Oh Mah Gawd We Can’t Let Anyone See Those Dirty Torture Pictures Amendment, but even though the amendment was removed (I don’t believe it made it back into the supplemental before it was signed), President Obama gave Graham his assurance that he’ll ban the pix, even issuing an executive order if he has to, according to this (of course, an executive order doing away with DADT once and for all is a better idea, but I digress).

Justice Department budget. Voting 259-157, the House passed a bill (HR 2847) appropriating $64.4 billion for the fiscal 2010 budgets of the Justice and Commerce Departments, NASA, and several other agencies. The bill represents a 12 percent spending increase over 2009.

A yes vote was to pass the bill.

Voting yes: Adler, Andrews, Brady, Dent, Fattah, Gerlach, Holden, Murphy, LoBiondo, Schwartz, and Smith.

Voting no: Castle and Pitts.

Hmm, there’s an amendment here from Repug Dave Reichert of Washington (one day, Darcy, one day) allocating $2.5 million for the Office on Violence Against Women – I thought Joe was big into human rights…or something…??

Guantanamo Bay. Voting 212-213, the House refused to bar the use of funds in HR 2847 (above) to carry out President Obama's decision to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The amendment went beyond a ban already in the bill on releasing Guantanamo prisoners into the United States.

A yes vote was to keep Guantanamo open.

Voting yes: Adler, Castle, Dent, Gerlach, LoBiondo, Pitts, and Smith.

Voting no: Andrews, Brady, Fattah, Holden, Murphy, Schwartz, and Sestak.

Typical party-line BS to maintain the existence of a facility that offends the conscience of the world (and ooh, don’t transfer those scary terrists into one of our supermaxes!!).

Yes, Obama needs to fight a little harder on this (as if he doesn’t have enough to do). And in a perfect world, the “worthy opposition” would see the light of day here, and more than a few voters in this country would grow up.

But sadly…

Legal Services Corp. Voting 105-323, the House defeated an amendment to HR 2847 (above) to shut down the Legal Services Corp., which is the main federal program for providing the poor with legal representation.

Voting yes: Pitts.

Voting no: Adler, Andrews, Brady, Castle, Dent, Fattah, Gerlach, Holden, LoBiondo, Murphy, Schwartz, Sestak, and Smith.

This week’s stupid No vote by Joe Pitts (glad there aren’t any poor people in PA-16 who need legal representation – of course, those cameras I noted yesterday record everything perfectly, so there’s no need for costly litigation in the event of a wrongful arrest).

Senate

War budget. Voting 91-5, the Senate sent President Obama a bill (HR 2346) appropriating $106 billion through September for purposes such as funding U.S. combat in Afghanistan and Iraq; sending nonmilitary aid to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Middle East; containing flu on a global scale; fighting Mexican drug cartels; supporting the International Monetary Fund; providing disaster aid to areas of the United States, and funding a new program to help consumers replace gas-guzzlers with fuel-efficient vehicles.

A yes vote was to pass the bill.

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

In the article I linked to previously about Lieberman-Graham, it’s noted that fellow Repug Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., voted against it…

…DeMint's aides said he opposed the bill because it contains "a $108 billion IMF bailout" and the $1 billion to help automakers.

The measure provides only $5 billion in direct funding to the IMF, as part of a credit line that could go higher.

DeMint's amendment to strip the IMF funding was defeated in the Senate last month by a 64-30 vote.

Typical.

In addition to DeMint, Tom Coburn, Mike Enzi, Russ Feingold and Bernie Sanders voted No also (as noted here, with the latter two for very different reasons than the others, I’m sure).

This week, the House took up an energy and global-warming bill, while the Senate resumed debate on a bill to promote foreign tourism in the United States.