Where The Rubber Meets The Road (7/31/09)

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 (and I also posted here).

House

Housing, transportation budgets. Voting 256-168, the House passed an appropriations bill (HR 3288) that provides $68.8 billion in discretionary spending and $123.1 billion in total spending for transportation, housing, and urban development programs in fiscal 2010.

A yes vote was to pass the bill.

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.), Frank A. LoBiondo (R., N.J.), Patrick Murphy (D., Pa.), Allyson Y. Schwartz (D., Pa.), Joe Sestak (D., Pa.), and Christopher H. Smith (R., N.J.).

Voting no: Michael N. Castle (R., Del.), Charles W. Dent (R., Pa.), Jim Gerlach (R., Pa.), and Joseph R. Pitts (R., Pa.).

This is a bit off-topic, but I should note that Patrick Murphy will be appearing tomorrow at 1 PM at Concerto Fusion in Morrisville, PA, and at the Acme on New Falls Road in Levittown, PA as part of his “Congressman In Your Corner” events (the 78th and 79th he’s hosted since taking office according to Murphy Communications Director Kate Hansen).

As Hansen also tells us today in the Bucks County Courier Times, Murphy has “(stood) with fellow prosecutors from the National District Attorney’s Association, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Rep. Mike Arcuri, and former head of the Republican Party Sen. Mel Martinez to introduce the IMPROVE Act, which would help reduce the $60 billion in taxpayer money lost to Medicaid fraud every year.”

So come on out to say hello to Patrick tomorrow (and good luck dodging the rain drops).

Public housing. Voting 152-276, the House refused to kill the HOPE VI public-housing program, which provides grants to communities for replacing rundown projects with mixed-income housing and support services for residents. Critics said the program is duplicative and has a multiyear backlog of unspent funds, while defenders argued against reducing the supply of housing for the poor. The amendment to HR 3288 (above) sought to eliminate the program's $250 million budget for 2010.

A yes vote was to kill the program.

Voting yes: Pitts.

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

What a shame that Pancake Joe didn’t bother to talk to one of his fellow congressional Repugs on this before he cast yet another ridiculous No vote, because if he had, he would have learned the following (here)…

Sen. Christopher S. "Kit" Bond, Missouri Republican, said he would advocate for the new program because it expands on the successful Hope VI initiative he has championed since its creation in 1992.

He said in an interview that the idea is "to see if we can do something in a coordinated effective effort to end the cycle of poverty and distress … and empower the local residents to have more control over their life."

Mr. Bond cited projects in St. Louis and also on Capitol Hill that are now model communities.

But I guess there must be no such thing as “poverty and distress” in PA-16, then.

O, how lucky.

Pay as you go. Voting 265-166, the House passed a bill (HR 2920) putting Congress' pay-as-you-go budget rules into permanent law and giving presidents power to sequester funds when Congress breaks those rules. The bill awaits Senate action.

Under "pay-go," Congress is required to offset tax cuts or increases in mandatory spending beyond baseline levels with matching revenue hikes or spending cuts. The bill exempts politically popular measures such as Alternative Minimum Tax relief, the Bush administration's middle-class and estate-tax cuts, and Medicare payments to doctors.

A yes vote was to pass the bill.

Voting yes: Adler, Andrews, Brady, Castle, Fattah, Holden, Murphy, Schwartz, and Sestak.

Voting no: Dent, Gerlach, LoBiondo, Pitts, and Smith.

I don’t remember any damn “middle class tax cut” from Dubya – we received about a $400 check not too long after he took over in ’01 I believe, but that was all I saw that made much of an impact.

And yep, I would call this a definite Yes vote for someone who may or may not be aspiring to the U.S. Senate (talking about Mike Castle here). Otherwise, it’s just party-line stuff as usual.

Health, education spending. Voting 264-153, the House passed a bill (HR 3293) that provides $160.7 billion in discretionary spending and $567 billion in mandatory spending for health, education, and labor programs in fiscal 2010. The bill ranks second to the Pentagon budget as the largest of the appropriations bills that will fund the $3.6 trillion federal budget next fiscal year.

The bill ends a 21-year ban on funding needle-exchange programs to curb the spread of AIDS and other infectious diseases.

A yes vote was to pass the bill.

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

Voting no: Pitts.

As noted here…

NEPs are an inexpensive public health intervention, especially when compared with the social costs of treating individuals with HIV or hepatitis-related chronic liver disease. The costs of preventing one case of HIV is estimated between $4,000 and $12,000 via NEPs. The medical cost of treating a person infected with HIV is about $200,000. Emergency room usage is lower among intravenous drug users if a NEP is in place. HCV-related liver disease, including cirrhosis and liver cancer, are estimated to cause more fatalities in 2010 than AIDS. Infected mothers can transmit the virus to infants before or during birth, or through breast feeding. One-thousand five-hundred intravenous drug users in Baltimore had entered an NEP as of the year 2000. The rate of HIV infection in Baltimore decreased by 70 percent between 1992 and 2000. The single use of sterile syringes is one of the most effective methods to limit the transmission of HIV and Hepatitis B and C and reduce disease transmission among drug users, their sexual partners and their children.

…

NEPs are more than a needle exchange program. Studies have shown that NEPs save lives, reduce suffering and lower the economic cost to society due to intravenous use of illegal drugs. If NEPs are associated with other services such as substance abuse treatment, then it is more likely that the ferocious cycle of drug abuse can be broken.

This is a welcome development for many reasons, one of which is that the Obama Administration disappointed needle-exchange advocates here by proposing to continue the funding ban that was instituted in 1989 as a rider to the Health and Human Services appropriations budget and renewed every year since. I have a feeling, though, that he believed the ban should have been removed through congressional legislation instead of through a presidential directive, given that he has spoken favorably in the past of needle exchange programs.

And I guess no one is using intravenous drugs illegally or suffering from blood-borne diseases in PA-16.

Once more, o, how lucky.

Senate

2010 military budget. Voting 87-7, the Senate authorized a $680 billion military budget for fiscal 2010, including $130 billion for war in Iraq and Afghanistan. The bill (S 1390) sets a 3.4 percent military pay raise, increases active-duty personnel by 40,200 troops to 1.41 million, and caps procurement of F-22 Raptor fighter jets at 187 planes.

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.).

Concealed handguns. Voting 58-39, the Senate failed to reach 60 votes for advancing a measure setting federal rules for concealed handguns. The amendment to S 1390 (above) sought to require the 48 states (all but Wisconsin and Illinois) that issue concealed-handgun permits to honor the permits of other states, even ones based on less-strict qualifications. The amendment was backed by the National Rifle Association and opposed by Handgun Control Inc.

A yes vote was to advance the amendment.

Voting yes: Casey.

Voting no: Carper, Kaufman, Lautenberg, Menendez, and Specter.

This is a pathetic, insulting vote by Bob Casey, which goes hand-in-hand with his “co-op” copout on a public health care plan. As I’ve said before, he has become every bit the “corpocrat” I feared he would be after he defeated Chuck Pennacchio for the Democratic Party Senatorial nomination in 2006.

I posted about this earlier here – this vote is disturbing on many levels, mainly because it was way too damn close (and once more, I stand by everything I said here).

This week, the House debated 2010 appropriations and, possibly, health-care bills. The Senate schedule was unannounced.