Bryan Watch: Mar 2021 II

Congress dealt with two three issues this week. The biggest was President Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID relief package (HR 1319), which passed the Senate March 6. Next was HR 842, the Protecting the Right to Organize Act. And the third was gun violence and background checks, with H.R. 8, the Bipartisan Background Checks Act and H.R. 1446, the Enhanced Background Checks Act up for votes.

COVID RELIEF BILL GOES TO BIDEN

On Wednesday morning, Queen of the crackpots Marjorie Greene Taylor (Crazy-GA) attempted to block passage of the COVID relief bill by pushing for adjournment. Even 40 of her Republican colleagues voted against this lame move. Steil voted will Greene to block the vote on COVID relief (RC 71, March 10)

A few hours later, the House passed HR 1319 as amended, on a vote of 220 to 211, sending the COVID relief plan to President Biden. (RC 72, Mar 10). Jared Golden of Maine was the only Democrat to vote against it.

Democrat John Yarmuth of Kentucky had one of the better lines of the week. “If Democrats had a potluck picnic, the Republicans would call it socialism,” said the Budget chairman.

President Biden signed HR 1319 into law on March 11.

LABOR RIGHTS BILL PASSES

The Protecting the Right to Organize Act is what it sounds like. It expands protections for labor organizations, including expanding the scope of who can belong to labor unions and allowing unions to conduct secondary strikes. It would effectively eliminate “right to work” laws and expand protections against workers who participate in unions from being unfairly fired. HR 842 is one of the most significant expansions of the rights of organized labor in decades.

The pro-union bill passed on an almost party line vote, with all but 5 Republicans voting against. Three were among the usual suspects: Brian Fitzpatrick (PA), John Katko (NY) and Chris Smith (NJ). The others were Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey and Don Young of Alaska. (RC 70, Mar 9)

Rep. Jim Banks moved to send HR 842 back to the Committee on Education and Labor, and fortunately failed (RC 69, Mar 9). There were two sets of amendments to HR 842.

In the first, Democrats made modifications to attempt to improve the bill. These include protecting privacy rights of union members (Sharice Davids, KS), protecting whistleblower rights (Sheila Jackson Lee , TX), providing NLRB postings in languages that workers could actually read (Newman, IL) and speeding up the timeline on multi-party arbitration (Rashida Tlaib, MI). That package of amendments passed 227 to 196, with only a handful of Republicans supporting it. Steil was not one of them (RC 67, Mar 9)

In the second block of amendments, Republicans attempt to gut the provisions on HR 842. They included protecting “right-to-work” laws (Allen of Georgia), eliminating the “persuader rule” from the Obama administration (Comer, KY), ending neutrality agreements (Good, VA) and allowing the permanent replacement of strikers (Keller, PA). Republicans also supported national “Right to Work” language in an amendment by Joe Wilson (SC), supported by right-wingers such as Louie Gohmert (TX), Debbie Lesko (AZ) and Tom Tiffany (Wisconsin). The Republican amendment package failed 185 to 243. Steil voted for it. (RC 68, Mar 9)

GUN CONTROL LEGISLATION

During the debate on background check legislation Wednesday, Republicans repeated NRA talking points while Democrats pointed out there was an epidemic of gun violence in the United States. Perhaps the most absurd argument of Republicans was that because criminals will ignore laws making it more difficult to obtain guns, we should not pass laws making it more difficult for criminals to obtain guns.

On Thursday, Democrats passed two major pieces of gun control legislation. HR 8 passed on an even more lopsided (Republicans 2 to 208) party line vote. Only Brian Fitzpatrick (PA) and Chris Smith (NJ) voted for this common sense legislation (RC 77, Mar 11). Richard of North Carolina Hudson moved to recommit the bill to the Committee on Judiciary and failed, but once again every Republican backed the delay (RC 76, Mar 11)

HR 1446 passed on an almost party line vote of 227 to 203, with eight Republicans voting for it (RC 75, Mar 11). Jim Jordan of Ohio moved to recommit the bill to the committee on Judiciary, which failed, but was supported by every Republican that voted (RC 74, Mar 11).

As usual, Republicans voted against even considering the COVID relief bill (H Res 198, RC 65 and 66. Mar 9). They also voted against considering the Right to Organize Act, along with the two gun related bills, HR 8 and HR 1446. (RC 63 and 64, Mar 8)

Scorecard: There were 15 votes in Congress this week. All of them were party line and Rep. Steil sided with the Republicans 100 percent of the time.