House Cloakroom: July 12 – July 16, 2010
Analysis:
Coming out of the July 4th recess week, the House will return to action on Tuesday for legislative business and a number of bills under suspension. Overall, it will be a light week with several parks and lands bills as well as setting a federal telework policy and extending the flood insurance program.
Major Floor Action
Major Committee Action:
- The House Homeland Security Committee Subcommittee on Management, Investigations, and Oversight will hold a field hearing on the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Chain of Command. The Heritage Foundation has recently sent down a team of respected energy, environment, homeland security and response experts to investigate what is and is not working and what more needs to be done.
- The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will hold a hearing on the implementation of Iran sanctions.
- The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law will hold a hearing on the ethics of immigration policy overhaul.
Senate Cloakroom: June 21–25, 2010
Analysis:
The Senate will return from its July 4th recess on Monday to continue to debate the Extenders bill, a revised version of the previous bill. Its passage would result in tax increases of over $50 billion dollars. Also on the agenda is the Small Business Lending Fund Act, a measure intended to increase bank lending to small businesses.
Major Floor Action:
Major Committee Action:
- The Senate Judiciary Committee will possibly vote on the pending nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan to be an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court.
- The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will hold a hearing on Afghanistan with Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke testifying.
- The Senate Armed Services Committee will hold a hearing on sustaining nuclear weapons under the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START). The Honorable Jim Talent recently wrote a blog post on The Foundry regarding the importance of this debate and the weaknesses of this treaty.
I realize our world has changed a lot since our founding fathers wrote our Constitution, however, our basic concept has been or should be held to these standards. It is , to me, unconstitutional for the Supreme Court or Congress to arbitrarily change it to suit their liberal, self-serving ideas. If they truly believed in equality Christians would be allowed freedom of speech as others have. Our forefathers put into our document the separation of church and state because they left countries that the government told people what religion they had to be and it changed with each new leader (king or dictator) not that people who supported a government could not also support their own choice of religion. We are supposed to have freedom of speech. It is also supposed to be government for the people and by the people. I resent a government taking away our rights ,our jobs and telling us what we are supposed to believe. Our government has gotten too large with agencies that are no longer needed or are duplicating the work of other agencies. Congressmen, representatives are not Superstars but employees of the people and should be paid only when in session. They should have paid attention to how are founding fathers sacrificed to do their job and not spend it all on their many parties, trips, limosines at tax payers expense.
PerhapsI misunderstood your article in the July 11th Florida today paper but it seems to me you were saying that unemployed workers who have been receiving weekly unemployment checks have become too lazy to keep looking for work. My son, a Civil engineer has been out of work for a year and a half and has exhausted all possibilities of finding a job. He used to make $80,000 a year and is now at the point of loosing his home.Don't YOU think he wants to work ! Do You really think that he is happy just collecting a measley $275.00 a week . As for returning back to school, let me tell you about how our wonderful government is helping with that! Because he already has one degree they will only give him part of the money he needs. I have had to advance him an extra $14,000.00 in order for him to get into a program.I am a 61yr old widow and had to take the money out of my retirement fund.Obviously this financial crisis has not affected anyone in your family or you would think before you speak.I can only hope that this never happens to you.