Thursday Feb 7 in Congress

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From Congressional Record

https://www.congress.gov/116/crec/2019/02/07/CREC-2019-02-07.pdf

House of Representatives

Rep Murphy was Speaker pro tempore

H.R. 494 Tiffany Joslyn Juvenile Accountability Block Grant Program Reauthorization Act of 2019

Passed. (page H1403 - H1406)

Juvenile justice system

H.R. 450 Preventing Crimes Against Veterans Act of 2019 (H 1406)

Passed 417-0.

Veteran's benefit fraud.

Some of the bills introduced:

H.R. 507 Put Trafficking Victims First Act of 2019 (H 1409)

Passed 414-1

Human trafficking.

H.R. 752 Open Book on Equal Access to Justice Act

Passed.

Establish database of court fees and costs where government is a party.

H.R. 962 Born-Alive Survivors Protection Act

Stuck in committee. (H1418)

Rep Scalise uses procedure to call attention to this.

EXPENDITURE REPORTS CONCERNING OFFICIAL FOREIGN TRAVEL (H 1455)

October through December: table of names, destinations, dates, and amounts.

Some of the bills introduced:

H.R. 1032. A bill to provide for the retention and service of transgender individuals in the Armed Forces.

H.R. 1046. A bill to amend title XVIII of the Social Security Act to require the Secretary of Health and Human Services to negotiate prices of prescription drugs furnished under part D of the Medicare program.

H.R. 1055. A bill to prohibit the application of certain restrictive eligibility requirements to foreign nongovernmental organizations with respect to the provision of assistance under part I of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961.

H.R. 1057. A bill to amend title 28, United States Code, to provide for a code of conduct for justices and judges of the courts of the United States.

H.R. 1063. A bill to amend title 44, United States Code, to require information on contributors to Presidential library fundraising organizations.

H.R. 1069. A bill to prohibit the Department of Health and Human Services from operating unlicensed temporary emergency shelters for unaccompanied alien children.

H.R. 1072. A bill to amend title 18, United States Code, to limit the authority of States and localities to regulate conduct, or impose penalties or taxes, in relation to rifles or shotguns.

H.R. 1102. A bill to assess and mitigate threats posed by Russian-Venezuelan cooperation, and for other purposes.

H. Res. 109. A resolution recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey introduced a bill (H.R. 1107) for the relief of Judge Neringa Venckiene, who the Government of Lithuania seeks on charges related to her pursuit of justice against Lithuanian public officials accused of sexually molesting her young niece.

Senate

Senator Grassley was President pro tempore

S 158, Motion to table the Lankford Amendment to S 47

Passed 66-33

Would have paid billions in deferred maintenance on Federal lands from the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

S 162, Motion to table the Lee Amendment

Passed 68-30

Would have reauthorized the Land and Water Conservation Fund for five years instead of permanently, then forcing Congress to then consider deferred maintenance on land purchases.

S 47 cloture motion introduced

Some of the bills introduced:

S. 367. A bill to provide for the administration of certain national monuments, to establish a National Monument Enhancement Fund, and to establish certain wilderness areas in the States of New Mexico and Nevada

S. 376. A bill to amend the Federal Water Pollution Control Act to clarify the definition of navigable waters

S. 420 [digits] A bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide for the taxation and regulation of marijuana products, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Finance.

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Rep Green, TX

BIGOTRY AND POLICY WILL NOT BE TOLERATED: "I rise today, Madam Speaker, to take a stand for liberty and justice for all against bigotry and hatred."

"It is the refusal to take on a President who has exhibited bigotry in policy."

"You have, in Virginia, a Klansman and blackface next to each other in a yearbook."

"what will we do next when there is a Nazi standing in a photograph and there is a noose in a photograph,there are swastikas?"

"Are we going to allow bigotry to emanate from the Presidency or will we go on record?"

"There will be a vote on impeachment, regardless of what the Mueller commission says."

Speaker pro tempore:

After Rep Green: "Members are reminded to refrain from engaging in personalities toward the President."

Rep Spano

GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN HARMS LEGAL IMMIGRATION: "Just yesterday, I met with farmers from my district who told me how very much they rely on skilled foreign labor. One farmer in particular advertised 800 jobs and, in fact, did not receive a single American applicant.

These farmers also expressed concern that, if the government shutdown continued, they will be unable to hire workers abroad because the State Department would not conduct the necessary hearings for H–2A visas."

Rep Bass, CA

H.R. 507, Put Trafficking Victims First Act of 2019:

"Forced labor and human trafficking are among the world’s fastest growing enterprises. Globally, these inhumane practices generate an estimated $150 billion a year in profit."

"women and girls represent approximately 71 percent of these victims."

"The U.S. State Department estimates that between 14,000 and 17,000 people are trafficked into our country from other nations every year. These victims are part of the estimated hundreds of thousands of victims of trafficking currently living within our communities."

"Foster youth, along with runaways and homeless youth, are at the highest risk of being sex-trafficked."

"Experts agree that the foster care system is yielding a disproportionate number of human trafficking victims. Nearly 60 percent of all child sex trafficking victims have histories in the child welfare system."

Rep Collins, GA

H.R. 507: "Traffickers use violence, threats, deception, debt bondage, and other horrendous tactics to force people to engage in commercial sex or to provide labor or services against their will."

Additionally, H.R. 507 promotes the effective prosecution of human traffickers and individuals who patronize or solicit children for sex."

Rep Walorski. (H 1431)

NEW YORK PARTIAL BIRTH ABORTION BILL: "Mr. Speaker, I rise today to urge a vote on H.R. 962, the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act.

This bill would require doctors to provide medical attention to children who survive an abortion attempt.Unfortunately, H.R. 962 is needed more than ever with the passage of a radical law in New York State that essentially legalizes infanticide. That law allows abortions up to and even after birth and ends safeguards to protect babies born alive after failed abortions."

Similar bills are being debated right now in States like Virginia, where the Governor spoke of making newborns comfortable while doctors and patients decide if they should be left to die."

"I urge this Speaker of this House to schedule a vote as soon as possible."

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Rep Biggs:

BORDER SECURITY: "Unlike many in Congress, I have been down to the border multiple times. I grew up just a number of miles—60, 70 miles—from the border myself. I have been down there many times. A couple of weeks ago I took eight Congressmen with me. We toured the border. We met with multiple ranchers, and their story is very similar. We got to talk to one guy—four home invasions, more than 15 burglaries, endless vandalism, and trespassing daily. He was not unique.

Another family has set up their own cameras and sensors so they can see. We watched them. We watched the people coming across. This is hour after hour of footage. Do you know what? These were young men coming across with carpet slippers so you couldn’t see their footprints. I didn’t see the moms and children coming across. I saw the young men carrying bundles of drugs across."

On Monday the 'Washington Examiner' published an article detailing the fear of border residents living in New Mexico. They, like those in Arizona, Texas, and California have been burglarized. They find groups of illegal aliens squatting in their barns with bundles of drugs on their land. But they won’t call the authorities because they fear retaliation from drug cartels.

Many of the people we met with said: we will meet with you on condition that you don’t reveal us meeting to the press because every time the press reveals something, we are retaliated against by drug cartels."

Rep Roy, TX (H 1437)

BORDER SECURITY: "I had the great privilege of spending some time with the men and women of the Border Patrol in the Rio Grande Valley sector in Texas this past week—2 days—with my fellow Texas freshman Congressman DAN CRENSHAW. What I saw was alarming.

What we learned from Border Patrol is that there will be upwards of 400,000 people crossing the border through the Rio Grande Valley sector this year alone. And of that 400,000 people, 200,000 of them, give or take, won’t even be apprehended because the men and women of the Border Patrol don’t have the tools they need, don’t have the fencing and the barriers they need, don’t have the ability to drive a vehicle parallel—lateral—to the Rio Grande River, don’t have the radio signal to be able to communicate on the border.

We found that, of the 200,000 people who will be apprehended, 90 percent of them will be captured and released because we have judicially mandated capture and release today. We have judges who have told us that we have got to capture people and then release them back out into our communities without going through the proper processes to truly vet asylum and truly vet what we are dealing with The result of that brings tragic consequences.

The Gulf Cartel in Mexico will make $130 million this year—$130 million—trafficking human beings across the Rio Grande Valley sector. They are integrated with FARC. They are integrated with terrorist networks. They have operational control of our border along Texas, and we are just acting like there is nothing to see."

Senator Thune, SD

"THE ECONOMY:" "You don’t have to look any further than recent Democratic policy to see how disconnected the Democratic Party is and has become from ordinary Americans.

Let’s take the so-called Green New Deal. This proposal, which would require that all U.S. energy production be renewable, could raise electricity bills for families by more than $3,000 per year—$3,000 per year.

It is difficult to see how anyone who understands the challenges faced by working families would propose adding $3,000 per year to their electricity bills."

"With last week’s polar vortex or even the average cold winters we get on the Great Plains, it is frightening to think about how many people would be at risk if it weren’t for reliable and affordable energy."

"The so-called Medicare for All would cost an estimated $32 trillion over 10 years. That is equivalent to the entire Federal discretionary budget more than two times over."

"Make no mistake—this is not a plan that would be paid for solely from the coffers of the rich; the so-called Medicare for All would be paid for on the backs of middle-class Americans."

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Senator McConnell

RECOGNITION OF THE MAJORITY LEADER: "Madam President, our colleagues on the Judiciary Committee are meeting to advance a number of judicial nominees and the President’s choice for Attorney General here to the Senate floor."

"Today, the Senate officially turned to the Natural Resources Management Act, a broad bipartisan package of 100-plus distinct land bills with importance to nearly every Member of this body. I am certainly one of them."

"Chairman Murkowski and all of our colleagues on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee deserve credit for getting us to this point."

"Madam President, on one final matter, in the days since House Democrats began arguing for a massive takeover of America’s elections, we have heard a lot of dramatic claims about the state of American democracy.

Speaker PELOSI has denounced ‘‘devious vote-suppression schemes.’’ The Democrats’ response to the State of the Union on Tuesday night warned of ‘‘threats to democracy’’ and ‘‘efforts to undermine our right to vote.’’ "

"To hear these Democrats tell it, all of the polling places across America are staffed—staffed—by malevolent people who set out to deny the franchise to as many of their neighbors as possible."

"But beneath the rhetoric, the procedures they are trying to attack actually could not be more reasonable.

We are talking about things like making sure voters are in the right precinct or even the right county so that they have the opportunity to vote for their local leaders—things like requiring any form of identification to verify that voters are who they claim to be, things like making sure there is enough time between voter registration and election day for officials to verify what district and precinct voters live in or that they are eligible to vote in that State in the first place."

"But now—now—Democrats have decided these standard processes are so unfair or so immoral that the Federal Government must snatch the reins away from the people and their local representatives."

"But more than 9 of 10 voters indicated they had no trouble whatsoever, so it is more than a little suspicious—more than a little suspicious—that Washington Democrats are trying to invent crises to justify a huge power grab for themselves.

This fact-free rhetoric is being used to push legislation that would override the decisions of Americans’ democratically chosen local leaders and replace them with one-size-fits-all prescriptions authored by a small handful of politicians, like Speaker Pelosi, Congressman Sarbanes, and a few others whom the vast majority of Americans do not elect and have no way to hold accountable. These prescriptions largely seem designed to help Democrats and their DC attorneys contest rules after election day. I call this 500-plus-page doorstop the Democratic Politician Protection Act for a reason."

"let States and localities take simple, necessary steps to protect our elections and ensure that valid votes are not diluted; to have procedures in place to make sure that voters are casting ballots in the right places; to make sure that the American people are the ones who determine how we elect our leaders."

"The real threat to American democracy is staring us in the face—right in the face: an invented crisis inaccurate rhetoric, all to justify an unprecedented intrusion by Washington, DC, Democrats into the way States run their elections."

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Senator Schumer

RECOGNITION OF THE MINORITY LEADER: "I knew Mr. Barr when he was Attorney General and when he was general counsel to Verizon—that is a New York company where I dealt with him—and I have always respected his public service and his intelligence. But when his authorship of an unsolicited memo to the Justice Department criticizing the special counsel’s investigation was uncovered, I came to the conclusion that he is the wrong person to serve as Attorney General at this challenging moment for our country. The memo alone, I felt, was disqualifying—maybe not under any President but certainly under this President, who is utterly contemptuous of the rule of law. But I wanted to give Mr. Barr a chance to change my mind, so I met with him a few weeks ago. Our conversation focused on three issues.

The first was an issue that had been discussed at his Judiciary hearing where I didn’t think his answer was very satisfactory, so I asked him again, very directly, whether he would recuse himself if ethics officials at the Justice Department said he should. Regrettably, he would not commit to do this. Instead he said he would make his own decision."

"The second issue I brought up was the need for the special counsel’s report on Russian influence in the 2016 election to be made public. Whatever conclusions Mueller comes to, we as a Congress and the American people have an obligation to see what kind of foreign influence there is in our elections. It seems pretty clear to me that in this case, the report should be made public—the full report, except things re-dacted for security purposes. I asked Nominee Barr whether he would release the full Mueller report, with redactions only if intelligence agencies said that was necessary to avoid compromising sources. He said he is for transparency. That is not good enough. We are all for transparency in the abstract. The question is, Are you for transparency in probably the most important act you will take as Attorney General when it comes to transparency?…"

"Finally, I asked Mr. Barr about interference in the special counsel’s investigation. He referred to the special counsel regulations and said at the hearing and I think in other places publicly that he wanted to finish the investigation. That is not good enough. Finishing the investigation while interfering and limiting it as it goes forward would be a travesty—certainly with this President, who has treated the Justice Department as if it is his own personal fiefdom. At times, President Trump seems to feel there are two goals to the Justice Department and those alone—to punish his enemies and help him."

"I believe that in the coming months, our next Attorney General will be faced with one or more real constitutional crises. The Attorney General will be tested. If Mr. Barr is confirmed, I hope he will be equal to those challenges, but unfortunately and very regrettably, he was not willing to provide the Senate with sufficient assurances to give us confidence that he is prepared to meet the challenge."

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Senator Murkowski

S 47: "I think we would all agree that we have a very real problem with deferred maintenance on our Nation’s public lands. We think about the National Park Service most often, which has an $11.6 billion backlog, and it is not just the National Park Service. It is the National Wildlife Refuge, BLM, and the Forest Service."

Senator Lankford, OK

S 158, the Lankford Amendment to pay for the deferred maintenance: "The simple request is that we should actually take care of deferred maintenance when we buy it so that we are not adding property with deferred maintenance on day one, and we should have a plan to deal with deferred maintenance that we have—the $16 billion. Without that plan to actually deal with it and without a plan to deal with it the first day with products that we buy, we are adding to the deficit immediately."

"We don’t ever have to come back to it. I hope we do, but we don’t ever have to come back to it, and this Congress is notorious for only doing things we have to do."

Senator Lee, UT

Amendment 162: "the Land and Conservation Fund was enacted for a laudable goal; that is, to promote recreational opportunities on our Federal public lands. But in recent decades, the program has regrettably drifted far from its original intent and has become rife with abuse.

Indeed, the Land and Water Conservation Fund—or LWCF, as it is often described—has instead been used as a primary tool for more Federal land acquisition rather than to actually help people access or to help the government care for the land we already manage.

"Through the LWCF, the Federal Government has added more and more land to its already vast estate currently totaling 640 million acres of land in this country. To put that in perspective, that is bigger than about seven major European countries combined—and I don’t mean their public lands; I mean the entire countries themselves—nearly one-third of all land in the United States. … the Federal

Government is failing to take care of these lands; make no mistake about it."

"Wildfires have run rampant in the West because of mismanagement and neglect. Ill-kept roads and trails have actually kept citizens from accessing these national treasures,"

"Senator LANKFORD and I have offered several amendments that would help address this program, but at the very least, we ought not to be permanently reauthorizing it without any of these conditions in place.

That is why I have offered an amendment that would reauthorize for 5 years the Land and Water Conservation Fund so that we are forced to reassess the program at a later date"

Senator Manchin, WV

Amendment 162: "I also rise to oppose the amendment of my good friend from Utah."

"In my view, this is the most significant achievement of this broad public lands package. For the first time, we will be permanently reauthorizing the Land and Water Conservation Fund. This is the glue that holds us all together."