Student Loan Exemption for Deceased Veterans - Vote Passed (400-0, 29 Not Voting)
This bill would exempt student loan debt from gross taxable income for veterans who die as the result of a service-related disability. Loan forgiveness would be back-dated to October 7, 2001, and families/survivors of the deceased would have up to one year after enactment of the bill to file for refunds.
Rep. Jim Himes voted YES......
Nobody dared vote against this one.
Public Funding for Political Conventions - Vote Passed (310-95, 24 Not Voting)
This bill would prohibit the use of monies in the Presidential Election Campaign Fund for financing presidential nomination conventions, e.g. the Democratic and Republican National Conventions. Under current law each major party is entitled to $4 million to stage their conventions and minor parties are entitled to an amount proportionate to their popular vote percentage in the previous election. An earlier House bill passed last December (Roll Call 873) would have eliminated the Presidential Election Campaign Fund, and thus the public financing of elections entirely. Unlike that measure, which was unanimously opposed by Democrats, the more modest bill passed last week attracted about half of all Democrats voting as well as all Republicans.
Rep. Jim Himes voted YES......
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Welfare Work Requirements – Disapproval Resolution - Vote Passed (250-164, 15 Not Voting)
At issue was a July 12 memorandum issued by the Health and Human Services Department (HHS), which oversees the welfare program, whose technical name is Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). The memo laid out a proposed waiver program for states that meet certain requirements for boosting TANF employment goals. Republicans claim that HHS does not have the waiver authority it claims; the latter assertion was supported by a Government Accountability Office report. The action taken by the House last week would repeal the move by HHS.
Rep. Jim Himes voted NO.....
JH supports there being no work requirements for welfare.
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STEM Visa Program - - Vote Failed (257-158, 14 Not Voting)
Immigration has always been a partisan battleground, but one area the parties seemed to have formed agreement in the 112th Congress was on the need to boost immigration by high-skill workers, particularly those in the so-called STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, mathematics). The detail that derailed talks is that Smith wanted those visas to come at the expense of an existing program, the diversity visa lottery, which sets aside slots for people from countries with historically low rates of immigration to the U.S. Schumer and other Democrats wanted to simply create new slots for the STEM graduates while holding the diversity lottery harmless. Last week Smith and House leadership decided to try their luck on the floor; it ended up falling 20 votes shy of the two-thirds needed for passage.
Rep. Jim Himes voted YES......
JH votes against diversity and for high tech immigrants.
Manhattan Project National Park - Vote Failed (237-180, 12 Not Voting)
Another failed suspension vote came on this bill to set aside federal land in New Mexico, Washington state, and Tennessee for a national park commemorating the Manhattan Project that led to the creation of the atomic bomb. Most suspensions are non-controversial, and Democrats in particular are usually in favor of creating parkland, but opponents of the measure said it would send the wrong message to allies such as Japan, which suffered mass casualties as a result of the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II. The bill fell 41 votes short.
Rep. Jim Himes voted YES......
JH likes parkland.
Energy Regulatory Rollback – Passage - Vote Passed (233-175, 21 Not Voting)
The final bill passed by the House before the November elections was a summation of sorts regarding one of Republicans’ core electoral and policy arguments – namely that regulations, particularly those concerning energy production – are hurting the economy. H.R. 3409 is a smorgasbord containing the texts of five different bills, four of which had previously passed the House (Roll Calls 249, 573, 741 and 800, all in 2011). The original bill would prevent the Interior Secretary from issuing any regulations before 2014 that would result in damage to the coal industry, e.g., reductions in coal mining jobs, the amount of coal available for consumption or export, etc. The other proposals would: prevent EPA from regulating greenhouse gases as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act, as well as effectively repeal automobile efficiency standards that would increase gas mileage to 54.5 mpg by 2025; create a cross-agency council for analyzing EPA regulations and their effect on the economy, as well as pre-empting a handful of EPA rules from being finalized and nullifying others already finalized; prevent EPA from regulating coal ash - a byproduct of coal combustion that some states use to make asphalt – instead allowing the states to regulate it as they see fit; and limiting EPA authority over water-quality standards.
Rep. Jim Himes voted NO
No surprise here ... JH likes regulation.
