Legislative Update XXI

The House of Representatives passed funding for high-speed rail projects, lifted a stupid ban on using taxpayer dollars for needle exchange programs for intravenous drug users, and passed a measure to require PAYGO, or "pay-as-you-go" budget rules. House committees approved bills to Puerto Ricans decide their island's political status and to shift student loan lending from FFELP to the Department of Education's Direct Loan program instead per President Obama's request.

The Senate approved a defense spending bill that includes the F-22 and alternate F-35 engine cuts that President Obama and the Pentagon wanted. The Senate also rejected an amendment to would have let people carry hidden guns in 48 states if they have a concealed weapon permit in any one of them. Differences now need to be resolved with the House.

As for health care, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says the Senate will miss the August deadline for a vote on legislation and it will be postponed until September. The House may vote next week (or not), but work is still ongoing. The White House isn't happy, of course, but still hopeful.

Capitol Hill Update XIII

Congress passed legislation which would reverse U.S. Supreme Court rulings that created new barries to coverage under the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act. The measure clarifies that Congress intends the Americans with Disabilities Act to be broadly interpreted in requiring employers to make accommodations for the disabled.The court ruled, for instance, that mitigating circumstances like medication or a prosthesis make a person ineligible for coverage. On a voice vote, the House of Representatives approved the measure that was unanimously passed by the Senate last week. The White House said President George W. Bush would sign it into law.

The U.S. House passed a bill intended to prevent excessive speculation in oil despite a veto threat from the White House. It also passed a bill to compel the District of Columbia to ease its gun control laws. However, a second economic stimulus package was defeated.

Meanwhile, the Senate voted on a defense bill that included a military pay raise. The Senate bill must now be reconciled with the House's version before the legislation is sent to the White House for President Bush's signature.

Law enforcement officer deaths up sharply, lapse of gun ban blamed

Not good:

Statistics released Thursday showed that 101 local and federal law enforcement officers died on duty in the first half of the year, 31 more than had died at the same time last year. It was the first time in three decades that the toll had reached more than 100...

Floyd called the statistics “very alarming” and “somewhat puzzling, quite honestly, because over the last 30 years we’ve seen a downward trend in the number of officers’ being shot.”

They blame the sharp increase on more violent criminals who have access to deadlier weapons:

Local and federal law enforcement officials told NBC News that criminals were more likely to use high-powered semiautomatic pistols and handguns today.

Some of those weapons, like the widely feared Intratec Tec-9, were banned until 2004, but they became legal when Congress refused to extend the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, even though President Bush, an opponent of gun control, promised to sign an extension.

Semiautomatic firearms — including the previously banned assault-style guns often misleadingly equated with “assault weapons,” which remain illegal — boast higher-capacity magazines than standard revolvers, and their trigger mechanisms allow users to fire off more rounds in a shorter period of time.

The study did not examine how many of the police officers killed this year were shot with weapons that were legalized three years ago, but the study and figures compiled by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics suggest a statistical correlation.

The 39 officers killed in the first half of 2007 exceeds the 36 officers shot to death in all of 2004, the last year the ban was in effect. More broadly, firearm-related crime rose in 2005, the first year after the semiautomatic weapons became legal again, after having declined every year since the ban took effect in 1994.

“We’ve always had lots of guns,” said Charlotte-Mecklenburg, N.C., Police Chief Darrel Stephens, president of the Major Cities Police Chiefs Association. None of the department’s officers were killed by gunfire last year, but six have been gunned down since Jan. 1.

“What we’ve seen is people shifting from revolvers to automatic weapons,” Stephens said. “Rather than six shots or five, they have 14 or 20.”

Floyd said police countermeasures had not yet caught up to the increased firepower of criminals on the street.

“Bullet-resistant vests are designed to stop normal handgun ammunition,” he said. “Criminals are getting their hands on high-powered assault weapons, and those weapons pose a great danger to police because their soft-body armor won’t protect them, in most cases.”

I have to say that I'm not as liberal on gun control as I am on other things and I admit I was just as willing to let the '94 ban die as so many other Democrats at that point. But if this correlation exists, then we should definitely look to re-instituting the ban, in some form at least. The gun control issue is definitely an area where there's too much emphasis on ideology over pragmatic, good policy. Unfortunately, mayors have been much more likely recently to tackle gun measures than our NRA-enslaved Congress.

Goings-On in Congress

Sen. Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, revealed that before signing the bill passed overwhelmingly by Congress earlier this year that repealed a Patriot Act provision to appoint interim U.S. attorneys without Senate approval, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was able to install George Cardona in the Central District of California. The bill, the Preserving United States Attorney Independence Act of 2007, had been on the president’s desk since June 4th but was not signed by him until yesterday.

On Wednesday, the House passed by voice vote a NRA-approved gun bill in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings. The measure would make more electronic data available to states for checking the criminal and mental health records of people who want to purchase guns. It would authorize new funding to help states enter felony convictions, mental disability and domestic violence records into the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). Gun dealers use NICS, created by a 1993 law, to check whether a person qualifies to buy a firearm. CQ warns the bill may not pass the Senate as easily, but most think it will ultimately be passed and signed by President Bush.

In another round of votes on the Iraq war before the July Fourth recess, the Senate will cast separate votes on whether to cut off funding for the war after March 31st of next year, order troop withdrawals within four months, impose stricter standards on the length of combat tours, and rescind congressional authorization for the Iraqi invasion. The House will consider similar proposals later on.

The measures will be offered as amendments to the 2008 defense authorization bill, but will probably fall short of the 60 votes needed to invoke cloture and pass. However, this is seen as part of a strategy by Democrats to keep pressure on Republicans over the war.

Democrats were forced to set aside — at last until next week — their renewable fuels proposal after it became clear they lacked the 60 votes to proceed.

The bill, which will be combined with other energy legislation in the House, would require power companies to increase use of wind turbines, solar panels, biomass, geothermal energy or other renewable sources to produce at least 15 percent of their electricity by 2020. Only about 2.4 percent of the country's electricity is produced that way now. But the Senate reached an impasse when it rejected a GOP alternative that would have allowed utilities to meet the requirement by also building more nuclear power plants and taking conservation measures.

Republicans balked and refused to allow a vote on the bill. Now it's uncertain if it will get final approval before the Fourth of July recess.

Finally, Senate leaders announced a deal last night to bring back a comprehensive immigration reform bill either late next week or the week after for more floor debate. The measure had been pulled by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid last week after the Senate failed to invoke cloture, mainly because of Republican opposition. President Bush met with Republican senators and told them he would approve $4.4 billion in immediate funding for border security measures in order to get Republicans back on board. It will be one of 20 new amendments to be offered on the bill. Still, no one knows if it will ultimately get the support needed for passage, but things look better than they did just a week ago.

UPDATE:

The House today passed a $37.4 billion budget bill for the Department of Homeland Security on a 268-150 vote, but Bush has threatened to veto because it exceeds his funding request. An even more generous bill funding veterans programs and military base construction also exceeds Bush's funding request, but passed by an overwhelming 409-2 vote.

Republican Senator Jon Kyl blocked a vote in the Judiciary Committee on whether to authorize subpoenas to the Justice Department to obtain secret legal opinions and other documents related to the National Security Agency’s program of domestic eavesdropping. The action will block the vote for a week. After the vote next Thursday, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and chairman of the committee, "can decide whether to issue the subpoenas or use them as leverage in negotiations with the Bush administration over access to the documents."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said today he might have to pull the energy bill off the floor next week to revive the immigration bill , although he vowed to complete both before closing shop for the July Fourth recess. “If this [energy] debate doesn’t speed up, we’ll have to move to end debate,” he said, according to CQ. “If they do, Democrats are prepared to work through the weekends and the July 4 district work period to accomplish our goals.”

The U.S. Senate begins debate on the Employee Free Choice Act on Monday, with a cloture vote expected Wednesday, June 20. The bill, which makes it easier for workers to join a union, passed the House months ago 241-185 but faces a tough, 60-vote hurdle in the Senate.

Phew.