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115th Congress

house 2 broke?

January 27, 2017 ENFORCER // GROVER

The Count on Coal coalition launched a Congressional Scorecard for the 115th congress to track votes on coal-related issues.30

“Count on Coal ‘s scorecard was developed to ensure vital coal industry priorities remain at the top of members’ priority lists and are translated into action that provides coal communities with urgent relief from further economic harm,” the NMA press release reported.

One of the key votes tracked would be what NMA described as a “unnecessary” stream rule:

“Swift and decisive action on the Stream Rule is required to restore balance, save high-wage jobs and protect an energy source integral to our nation’s success,” said NMA president and CEO Hal Quinn. “The combination of unnecessary government overreach, regulatory duplication and harm done through this rule meets every test for CRA action and for a key vote to kick off our scorecard for the 115th Congress.”31

On February 16, President Donald Trump signed an order to repeal the Stream Protection Rule.The Sierra Club noted that the rule covers waterways near surface coal mining operations including mountaintop-removal mines.The rule, introduced in 1983 and later strengthened by the Obama Administration, wrote that coal mines could not damage the “hydrologic balance” outside of their permit areas by doing things like dumping debris into valleys that could pollute rivers and streams with heavy metals such as selenium, mercury, and arsenic.32

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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/19072018/anti-carbon-tax-resolution-house-vote-climate-solutions-caucus-curbelo-scalise-koch-influence-congress

 U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday passed a resolution denouncing the idea of a U.S. carbon tax as detrimental to the economy, one week before a Republican-sponsored bill to create a carbon fee is set to be introduced.

It was a win for a coalition of groups funded by the petrochemical billionaire Koch brothers and other wealthy, right-wing opponents of climate action. And it revealed weak resolve for bucking GOP leadership among most of the 43 Republican members of the Climate Solutions Caucus.

If the bipartisan caucus had held firm, the resolution would have been handily defeated.

Instead, only six Republicans—four of them caucus members, including Rep. Carlos Curbelo of Florida, who plans to unveil the carbon fee measure next week—joined most Democrats in opposing the resolution. Seven Democrats voted with the GOP.

The 229-180 vote marked a slight erosion in the GOP wall of opposition to climate action. In 2016, an identical measure passed the House 237-163with no Republicans opposed. Such resolutions are meant to express the views of the chamber and have no real-world impact, but with a different Congress in place now, carbon tax foes wanted a new vote.  The American Energy Alliance (AEA), the Heartland Institute, and 18 other conservative advocacy groups had urged House Speaker Paul Ryan earlier this month to bring the resolution to the floor.

AEA president Thomas Pyle said in an interview with InsideClimate News that the impetus was not the prospect of Curbelo's bill, but an effort to put members on the record before November. The groups put it this way in their letterto Ryan: "As we approach the 2018 midterm election, American voters need to know whether their elected representatives support the implementation of a new tax on the energy they rely on every single day."

The House's affirmation of a fossil fuel-friendly agenda comes in a week when President Donald Trump's administration did the same on multiple fronts.

The Environmental Protection Agency's new administrator, former coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler, finalized a plan to ease requirements for handling the toxic coal ash from power plants—rules developed by the Obama administration after costly spills in Tennessee and North Carolina. The Treasury Department announced it would scrap requirements that certain tax-exempt nonprofits disclose their donors, helping to cloak a key avenue for campaign contributions used by the Koch brothers and other wealthy political benefactors.

2 Views on How Climate Solutions Caucus Voted

The House vote showed the flimsiness of the Climate Solutions Caucus, the bipartisan coalition that Curbelo and others have sought to build behind the concept of a market-based solution for curbing greenhouse gas emissions.

RL Miller, president of the advocacy group Climate Hawks Vote, said the caucus' credibility is in tatters after its GOP members, whom she has frequently criticized for their weak environmental voting records, failed to hold off a resolution that strikes at the heart of their purported purpose.

"It would be a joke were the subject not so serious. The caucus has no credibility, and no ability to do anything," Miller said. "The climate is changing far more quickly than Republican attitudes. That's why we do not hold faith in bipartisan solutions."

But Steve Valk, spokesman for the Citizens Climate Lobby, a grassroots advocacy group that favors a carbon tax and that helped bring together the caucus, noted the non-binding resolution has no real effect. Valk said he did not expect that its members would go out on a limb against such a measure, especially since it was sponsored by House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.), the No. 3 Republican in the chamber and a potential successor to Ryan, who is retiring.

"Anybody who votes against this resolution—it's going to be a mark against them in the eyes of the leadership, which decides what assignments you get, whether or not you're on the committee you want, and who's chair," Valk said. "There's a lot of calculations that go into a decision like this. We're willing to look at that and say, yeah, it's not a simple choice for them.

"In my mind, if you can get a handful of Republicans to vote no on this, that's a victory."

The Conversation Is Shifting: Republicans Consider Carbon Pricing

Other carbon tax advocates expressed glass-half-full optimism, arguing the mere push for a vote by fossil fuel allies betrays their concern about the increasing support for the idea of putting a price on carbon to fight climate change.

"They feel that the momentum is shifting as the conversation commences, and they are trying to beat down any thoughtful analysis with a tribal drum that they are nervously beating louder," said former Rep. Bob Inglis, a Republican from South Carolina and founder of a conservative carbon tax advocacy group republicEn.

"If we were able to discuss this, we'd find that this is something that could bring conservatives and progressives together," he said.

Conservative advocates for a carbon tax have been trying to make their case in Washington since the start of the Trump administration with little success.Trump's former chief economic advisor, Gary Cohn, reportedly earned the derisive nickname "Carbon Tax Cohn" in the West Wing for giving a hearing to a revenue-neutral tax plan proposed by prominent Republicans, including former Secretary of State James Baker and former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

But since then, other groups have popped up. The nuclear-heavy energy company Exelon, the American Wind Energy Association and First Solar are funding a coalition called Americans for Carbon Dividends, which has hired former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, a Mississippi Republican, to lobby on the issue. Twenty-two college Republican groups came together earlier this year to form Students for Carbon Dividends. Its founding president, Alex Posner, an American history major at Yale, says the plan they favor would address international competitiveness and jobs creation and would look nothing like the carbon tax described in the Scalise resolution. "We want to see a plan that's pro-growth and pro-environment while shrinking the size of government," he said.

Pyle, of the American Energy Alliance, argues that no matter the design of a carbon tax program, consumers are worse off. "There's revenue generated, and then you haggle over how to spend it," he said. "It's no different than other taxes and fees. If you're giving back some to low-income households, it's a still a redistribution. And since poorer people pay a higher percentage of their incomes on energy, they are worse off."

A series of four reports released this week by Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy calls that argument into question, however, and provides ammunition for carbon tax advocates. The reports analyze various carbon tax legislation scenarios and conclude that they would increase government revenue by hundreds of billions of dollars a year and drive down U.S. emissions, far more than current policy, with minimal effects on the U.S. economy, families or businesses, or even on oil and gas production and consumption.

Curbelo: Resolution Presented 'a False Choice'

For now, the House vote preemptively throws cold water on Curbelo's planned introduction next week of legislation that wouldimpose an escalating tax on carbon emissions, while pausing federal regulations on climate change.Although Curbelo would not discuss details of his plan, reports said the revenue generated would be directed into infrastructure and in helping communities adapt to sea level rise and other impacts of climate change.

Curbelo did not speak on the House floor during the one-hour debate allotted for the Scalise resolution. But when asked by InsideClimate News to comment, he criticized the measure in an emailed statement.

"The resolution presents a false choice," Curbelo said. "While I agree a carbon tax on its own would not be the best way forward and could have negative effects on the economy, there are smarter, more innovative solutions that would not only reduce carbon emissions and mitigate for the effects they have on our planet, but also grow the economy and provide opportunities for American workers and businesses at home and abroad.

"I look forward to engaging with my colleagues on this topic next week, and sharing my own proposal in the near future," he said.

Curbelo, who represents the southern tip of Florida, one of the regions of the country most vulnerable to climate change impacts, is seen as one of the most vulnerable House Republicans. Cook Political Report and other political odds-makers call his race a toss-up.

With Democrats expected to gain between 20 and 35 seats in November, and just 23 needed for them to retake the majority, Inglis argues that Scalise wasn't doing his own party any favors by forcing a carbon tax showdown. "Steve, what are you doing, running for minority leader?" asked Inglis. "He's putting people at risk for an idea that is clearly going to become very passé and very retro looking."

The House Debate

During the House debate on the measure, Republicans urged a stand against carbon taxes while taking pains to assert that they were not denying the science of climate change.

"I'm not a climate denier. I'm not a science denier. I'm a climate thinker," said Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.) "And real science isn't just about assessing costs only. It's about looking at benefits as well. ... Coal provides cheap, plentiful, reliable energy over the long term. We should not want the most carbon-free energy, but the best energy."

Democrats used up much of their 30 minutes of time attempting to change the subject from the anti-carbon tax measure to spotlight Trump's controversial meeting this week with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.), managing the resolution for the GOP, repeatedly refused.

A handful of Democrats, most of them members of the Climate Solutions Caucus, offered full-throated defense of carbon taxes.

"For decades, economists from across the ideological spectrum have argued that a carbon price is the most efficient way to discourage the use of fossil fuels and the best way to encourage energy efficiency measures and market decisions on everything from housing to transportation," saidRep. Don Beyer (D-Va.). "The science continues to accumulate in prodigious amounts that the pollution is changing our Earth and the cost is staggering into the billions. Carbon pricing is the most market-oriented policy we can take to combat this."

Rep. Earl Blumenauer, (D-Ore.) said the resolution "encapsulates what's wrong with the Republican management of this Congress. It is a cartoon that doesn't deal with the underlying issues," he said. "We could have a debate about real legislation that would satisfy their answers and be able to deal with what our responsibilities are to the future. ... Instead, we're dealing with empty gestures."

In addition to Curbelo, Republicans voting against the resolution were Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Mia Love of Utah—all members of the Climate Solutions Caucus—and Reps. Trey Hollingsworth of Indiana and Francis Rooney of Florida. The Democrats who joined the GOP in voting for the resolution were Reps. Sanford Bishop of Georgia; Henry Cuellar and Vincente González of Texas; Conor Lamb of Pennsylvania; Stephanie Murphy of Florida; and Tom O'Halleran and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. 

PUBLISHED UNDER:

REGULATION

CLIMATE CHANGE

6/18

https://www.alternet.org/house-republicans-pass-bill-requiring-millions-work-food-stamps

House Republicans just passed major legislation that would

require millions of people who are disabled or possibly otherwise unable to work, to work to be eligible for food stamps. The farm bill passed by a very narrow margin: 213-211. 20 Republicans joined with Democrats to oppose the archaic legislation.

The work requirement, which President Trump specifically praised in a statement via Twitter, would require "millions of low-income Americans who receive nutritional assistance to work at least 20 hours a week or enroll in a job training program," USA Today reports. but Democrats oppose the legislation, especially the work rule, saying "the new requirements would slash benefits to needy families and the elderly, jeopardizing their ability to put food on the table."

The food stamp program is officially known as SNAP, or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

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http://www.alternet.org/environment/how-political-theater-congress-threatening-science-and-climate

As  the Trump administration embarks on a deregulatory frenzy aimed at weakening federal climate action, Congress is matching his enthusiasm. Dozens of GOP-sponsored bills have been introduced that seek to hamstring the government’s ability to protect the environment, cut greenhouse gas emissions and consider peer-reviewed science in its decisions.

Legislation introduced since January includes a bill to undermine science used by the EPA, one to prevent the treatment of CO2 as a pollutant, a measure to end federal oversight of fracking and even one that abolishes the EPA altogether.

Some bills are revived versions from factions in Congress who have long opposed federal action on climate change and environmental regulation. With the Trump administration’s stated mission to roll back regulations of all kinds, Republican lawmakers are seizing the moment.

“I would still put long odds on any of them making it through the Senate,” said Michael Wara, an environmental law professor at Stanford Law School, noting the Republicans have only a 52-48 edge in that chamber. “So in some sense, not much has changed, and we should not put too much weight on legislation that has been introduced or even passed in the House until there is strong Senate sponsorship of a parallel bill.”

“These bills are aimed at making it more difficult for policymakers to use solid science in policymaking,” said Michael Mann, a Penn State climate scientist who testified before the House Science Committee on March 29. “Great for the fossil fuel industry, the tobacco industry, and the other corporate interests whose bidding they’re doing; bad for the rest of us who bear the brunt of lost protections and safeguards.”Only a few pieces of anti-climate or anti-environmental regulation legislation have gained traction in both houses. Still, climate scientists and watchdogs are alarmed by what they see, and fear that some bills could end up with Trump’s signature on them.

David Archer, a University of Chicago geophysicist who studies the carbon cycle, said the proposed legislation and Trump’s deregulatory efforts show contempt for science and the low-income and minority communities most likely to be harmed by policies that weaken environmental protection.

“I think it’s a kind of institutionally subconscious racially motivated genocide,” Archer said.

Taken together, however, the deregulatory bills amount to little more than political theater and have almost zero bipartisan support, said Michael Burger, executive director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University

“To the extent Republicans expect anything to pass into law, it seems they are more interested in advancing special interests than protecting public health and welfare,” he said.

These are among the dozens of such bills — none of them with significant Democratic support — currently being considered by Congress the honest act The bills generating the most anxiety in the scientific community are those requiring federal environmental regulations to be based only on research that is fully available to the public, in particular, the Honest and Open New EPA Science Treatment Act. Passed by the House last week, the bill would limit the science used by the  EPA to that which is  publicly available and reproducible.

The bill, which has failed to pass the House in the past, was revived by climate change denialist Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas. He aims to discredit peer-reviewed climate science, including research underlying the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change climate assessment reports that he falsely claims was not conducted following the scientific method.

“The goal here is to create the opportunity to better challenge the science underlying agency actions,” Wara said.

The science underlying EPA regulations is vigorously reviewed and transparent, and the bill could prevent the agency from using the best science to substantiate its policies, said Gretchen Goldman, research director at the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The raw data, models and code that form the basis of many studies are often not publicly available because it is proprietary intellectual property or private health data that cannot be legally made public, Goldman said. The EPA would be barred from using research that fell into those categories, she said.

The mandate for the research to be “reproducible” would also prohibit research from being used as the basis of policy, said Ken Caldeira, senior scientist at the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution for Science.

“All of the climate science and related environmental science that I read in the peer-reviewed literature is in-principle reproducible,” Caldeira said. “The reason it is not in fact reproducible is that the federal funding agencies rarely provide resources to redo work that someone else has already done.”

The bill is being heard by the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.

EPA Science Advisory Board Reform Act

Scientists are also nervous about the EPA Science Advisory Board Reform Act, which passed the House with the support of two Democrats on March 30. The act would prohibit the board from “communicating uncertainties” and making policy recommendations to the EPA, while encouraging dissenting board members to speak out. The board provides scientific advice to the EPA administrator.

Most climate science involves uncertainty. For example, it’s impossible to know precisely when human climate pollution will warm the atmosphere to levels scientists consider dangerous — 2°C (3.6°F) — but it’s likely to happen before 2050.

Understanding the uncertainties around climate pollution is key to many climate regulations because it’s necessary for the federal government to understand how deeply emissions need to be cut for climate regulations to be effective.

But the bill, if passed, would bar the EPA administrator from hearing anything about uncertainties, which means the Science Advisory Board couldn’t discuss much science at all.

“Science is all about communicating uncertainty,” Caldeira said. “Science is about expanding the range of what we know to be false. Truth lies in the range of what we don’t know to be false — that is the uncertainty range. People who don’t want scientists to communicate about the uncertainty range are people who don’t understand what science is all about.”

The bill is being heard by the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.

Stopping EPA Overreach Act

The Stopping EPA Overreach Act, if passed, would prevent the federal government from using the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions — the basis of the Clean Power Plan and other EPA climate regulations.

The bill would overturn the EPA’s “endangerment finding,” a 2009 scientific determination that carbon dioxide pollution is a threat to human health because it causes climate change. The EPA released the finding after a 2007 Supreme Court decision allowing greenhouse gases to be regulated under the Clean Air Act....

tripping greenhouse gases out of the Clean Air Act would do enormous damage to the prospects of regulating greenhouse gases under a future administration,” Wara said. “This is in part because the Clean Air Act is the only existing tool to do so.”

While the bill has more sponsorship than any climate- or EPA-related bill to pass the House so far — 120 co-sponsors, all of them Republican — legal experts do not expect the bill or any of the others to gain much traction in the Senate if it is passed in the House.

However, the Senate is considering its own limits on federal greenhouse gas regulation.

Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., are among the sponsors of the Agency PAYGO for Greenhouse Gases Act. If a proposed greenhouse gas emissions regulation imposes costs to other federal agencies, the EPA must offset those costs with cuts to its own budget.

The bill is being heard in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

U.S. Sens. Jeff Flake and John McCain, R-Ariz., are sponsoring a bill that would require the EPA to offset greenhouse gas emissions regulation costs incurred by other agencies. Credit: Gage Skidmore/flickr

Other bills that aim to hamstring federal environmental and climate protection, but still have a lot of traction to gain in Congress, include:

• **Fracturing Regulations are Effective in State Hands Act**. This bill, sponsored in the House by seven Republicans and in the Senate by 12 Republicans, would prevent the federal government from regulating any aspect of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, handing that responsibility to individual states.

Fracking is a method of injecting sand and chemicals to crack open rock formations deep underground to release oil and natural gas. Advances in fracking technology brought about the shale oil and gas boom of the past decade, helping to cause the 2014 crash in oil and gas prices and encouraging electric power plants to switch away from coal. The fracking process also pollutes the atmosphere with methane, a gas about 34 times as strong as carbon dioxide in warming the climate over the span of a century.

The Obama administration attempted to control air and climate pollution from fracking operations, but Trump overturned those efforts with an executive order in March.

• **The Recognizing Protection of Motorsports Act, or “RPM Act.”** This bipartisan bill exempts emissions from cars used in competition, such as stock car racing, from regulation under the Clean Air Act. The legislation has 112 sponsors in the House and a corresponding bill has 27 sponsors in the Senate. Both bills are being heard in committee.

• **The Ozone Standards Implementation Act**. This bipartisan Senate bill, sponsored by six senators from coal-dependent states, amends the Clean Air Act to delay implementation of 2015 ozone pollution standards implemented by the Obama administration. The bill requires the EPA’s Science Advisory Board to provide advice about how meeting the ozone pollution standards would have adverse public health and economic impacts. The bill remains in committee.

• **H.R. 861.** This bill, sponsored by Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., with six GOP co-sponsors, would terminate the EPA at the end of 2018. The bill is stalled in the House.

• **The Wasteful EPA Programs Elimination Act**. Sponsored by a single Texas Republican congressman, this bill would kill nearly all EPA climate programs, and terminate the EPA’s environmental justice programs and state grant programs. The bill is stalled in committee.

Bobby Magill is a Senior Science Writer at Climate Central,

http://www.ecowatch.com/nuclear-option-gorsuch-2347867635.html

Senate Republicans Rig System, Trigger 'Nuclear Option' to Push Through Gorsuch

Senate Republicans rushed through a confirmation vote Thursday on President Donald Trump's nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court. Judge Neil Gorsuch has been met with widespread criticism both across the country and from the Senate before, during and after his confirmation process.

For more than 200 years, the Senate has honored a 60 vote margin for Supreme Court nominees to be confirmed. Gorsuch only received 55. According to existing Senate procedure, Gorsuch's nomination would be defeated and the Senate would move forward without confirming him to the court. Instead, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell changed the rules and triggered the so-called "nuclear option" for what had been deemed the "greatest deliberative body" to force Gorsuch's nomination through.

The Senate rightfully rejected Judge Neil Gorsuch's nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. It is their duty to advise and consent on judicial nominees and with this vote, they refused their consent and advised President Donald Trump that Gorsuch is not fit to be granted a lifetime appointment to America's highest court..

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/republicans-are-about-to-kill-rules-banning-internet-providers-from-sharing-your-web-history-without-your-consent_us

House Republicans jammed through a measure on Tuesday overturning the Obama administration’s rules that would have banned telecom and cable companies from sharing customers’ personal information, including web browsing history, without their consent.

The House resolution passed 215-205, mostly on party lines. Its companion passed the Senate last week on a:{ 50-48 vote:(style="box-sizing:inherit"):}:. If President Donald Trump signs the measure into law, internet service providers will win a regulatory victory. But advocates say consumers can kiss network privacy goodbye.

“ISPs will be able to sell your personal information to the highest bidder ... and they won’t have any real obligation to keep your personal information secure, either,” Gigi Sohn, who previously served as counselor to former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler, said Monday.

The FCC :{adopted rules:(style="box-sizing:inherit"):}: last October that required companies like Comcast and Verizon to get their customers’ explicit permission before they could share “sensitive” data like Social Security numbers, or information pertaining to children or health. Under the rules — which are :{not yet in effect:(style="box-sizing:inherit"):}: — companies also had to tell customers and law enforcement if a potentially harmful data breach occurred. (Verizon is the parent company of The Huffington Post.)

In a heated floor debate on Tuesday, House Republicans sought to paint the rules as an example of government overreach. “These broadband privacy rules are unnecessary,” said Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), who introduced the resolution.

But House Democrats warned that Republicans were scrapping common-sense privacy regulations — and predicted a dim future without them. Rep. Michael Capuano (D-Mass.) pointed to a patent application from an ISP for a cable box that would detect whether people were cuddling on the couch through a thermal camera, then show them TV commercials for a romantic getaway or contraceptives. “That’s what this bill will allow, and you can’t turn it off,” he said, calling it “terrible.”

The measure uses the :{Congressional Review Act:(style="box-sizing:inherit"):}:, which allows lawmakers to undo any regulation within 60 days of its finalization, while also barring agencies from writing a “substantially” similar rule after the original one has been overturned. That means the FCC could be banned from regulating ISP privacy issues in the future, said David Segal, executive director of Demand Progress, a grassroots group.

Trump ran a populist campaign, but his vision for the FCC, a government agency that is supposed to protect consumers from predatory telecom and cable companies, is :{shaping up to be the opposite:(style="box-sizing:inherit"):}:, consumer advocates say. The current FCC chairman, Ajit Pai, also :{opposed:(style="box-sizing:inherit"):}: Obama’s privacy rules when he was the agency commissioner under the prior administration.

Internet service providers say it’s not fair they have to be subject to regulations that tech giants like Facebook and Google, which the Federal Trade Commission oversees, don’t have to follow. In response, Republicans have advocated for a privacy framework modeled on the FTC’s approach. But according to Sohn, the FTC rules come into play after harm occurs ― while the FCC’s regulations have the power to protect consumers before they are harmed.

Advocates, as well as Democrats, say that it doesn’t make sense to regulate an ISP, which has access to everything a person does online, like Google, which only sees some of a person’s internet traffic. As a consumer, “if I don’t like the practices of Google, I can go to Bing; if I don’t like the practices of Bing, I can go to Firefox,” Wheeler told HuffPost on Monday. “But if I don’t like the practice of my network provider, I’m out of luck.”

“Consumers have entered into a business relationship with ISPs that ISPs are now seeking to change ... [but] it’s not their information, it’s the consumers’ information,” he said.

Overturning the rules is a win for the 21st Century Privacy Coalition, a group led by former Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz. The coalition is backed by telecom companies and has spent millions of dollars on lobbying in the past few years.

“I can’t tell you [the House-approved bill] is not repealing privacy regulations,” Leibowitz told HuffPost on Monday. But, he said, “in a very partisan Washington, where often the only choices are binary, the FCC passed a very flawed regulation.”

He argued that if the bill is enacted, the FCC can still continue to protect privacy. To do that, it could write another rule ― “if that rule takes a different approach.”

When asked whether he thought a repeal would improve privacy for consumers, he said only that the Obama administration’s rule would “increase costs to consumers and reduce choices, and reduce competition for privacy.”

But consumer advocates aren’t buying it. “It’s special interest lobbying as usual,” said Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy.

“These companies are just trying to exploit consumers’ data towards ends of private profit,” said Segal of Demand Progress.

As of Monday, the Congressional Progressive Caucus said it was opposed to the measure and would be pushing for legislators to vote against it. The office ofRep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), first vice chair of that caucus, also noted that they had received a fair amount of calls and emails in favor of the Obama administration rule.

“Considering how much access providers already have to highly sensitive data, it is absolutely unacceptable for them to monetize personal information,” Pocan said.

But that wasn’t enough to stop most House Republicans from approving the resolution. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Tuesday asked ISPs to weigh in on the measure. “This is about profit,” she told her House colleagues in the House. “From America’s most intimate, personal information.”

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see lamar

...

n obvious solution, for those seeking to avoid such regulation, would be to prevent that science from seeing the light of day. That’s exactly what Lamar Smith, a Republican congressman from Texas, is trying to do. On Thursday, the House Science Committee passed two of Smith’s bills: The Honest and Open New EPA Science Treatment Act (HONEST Act) and the Science Advisory Board (SAB) Reform Act. Combined, they would significantly change how the Environmental Protection Agency uses science to create rules that protect human health.

The HONEST Act is essentially a re-brand of Smith’s notorious Secret Science Reform Act, a bill that would have required the EPA to only use scientific studies for which all data is publicly available and the results are easily reproducible. The SAB Reform Act would change the makeup of the board that reviews the “quality and relevance” of the science that EPA uses: Scientists who receive EPA grants would be forbidden from serving, while allowing the appointment of industry-sponsored experts who have a direct interest in being regulated—so long as they disclose that interest.

In a press release, Smith said these bills would help promote “an open and honest scientific process” at the EPA. He says past regulations have been “based on hidden science” and that the SAB needs “a more balanced group of scientists to assist EPA in fulfilling its core mission.”

...

There’s no shortage of outrageous bills in Congress that few people take seriously. Republican Representative Matt Gaetz’s bill to abolish the EPA, for instance, caused widespread internet outrage and inspired hundreds of protesters to show up at a town hall Gaetz hosted. But the bill has absolutely no chance of becoming law.  

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http://grist.org/climate-energy/surprise-a-third-of-congress-members-are-climate-change-deniers/

An annual tally of climate deniers in Congress just came out, and there’s good news and bad news. The good news: You’re smarter than 34 percent of Congress. The bad news: You’re smarter than 34 percent of Congress.

The Center for American Progress Action Fund found that there are 182 climate deniers in the current Congress: 144 in the House and 38 in the Senate. That means more than six in 10 Americans are represented by people who think that climate change is a big ‘ol liberal hoax — including some leaders at the highest levels of government, like Senate Majority Leader Mitch “I Am Not a Scientist” McConnell and senator and presidential candidate Marco “I Am Not a Scientist” Rubio. (And those are just the members of Congress who are out-and-out deniers, so it doesn’t include the many more who kinda sorta admit that something might be going on with the climate but still don’t want to do anything about it.)...

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 dems can peel off jeff flake, rand paul on principles? no filibuster on cab appt?

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes says he hasn’t found enough evidence of communications between President Trump’s associates and Russian officials to justify appointing a special prosecutor to investigate—even though there hasn’t been an investigation in order to obtain that evidence. Instead, Nunes is trying to shift focus onto the leaks coming out of the White House, calling them "major crimes." Nunes’ stance puts him at odds with other Republican lawmakers, including former House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa, who on Monday called for an independent review.

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http://www.alternet.org/environment/4-major-environmental-rules-gop-congress-overturning-massive-gift-polluters

In the 24 days since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the Republican-controlled Congress has already moved to overturn four major rules that the oil, gas, and coal industries spent millions of dollars fighting during the Obama administration. First, Congress eliminated the Stream Protection Rule, which would prevent toxic mine waste from being dumped in streams. Then Congress voted to get rid of a rule that limited bribery and corruption in oil operations around the world. And in the coming days, the U.S. Senate is scheduled to vote to overturn a rule that limits methane pollution when oil and gas companies drill on public lands and to eliminate a rule that increases public input in public lands management decisions.

Of the more than 40 Obama administration environment and energy-related rules that anti-environment advocates have identified for Congress to consider for elimination under the Congressional Review Act, or CRA, why have Republican leaders in Congress chosen these four as their first targets? More broadly, what is the methodology that Republican leaders in Congress are using to decide which Obama administration environmental rules to overturn under the CRA?

According to Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI), Republicans in Congress are using their “precious time” to overturn Obama administration rules that they consider to be “excessive regulations that are killing jobs in America.” Yet, economists have found that the rules that Congress is targeting would either have negligible costs, minimal or positive effects on jobs, or large net economic benefits. The government’s economic analysis of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s, or BLM’s, rule to reduce methane waste, for example, shows that the cumulative net benefits of the rule will be between $740 million and $1.2 billion over a 10-year period.

Though congressional leaders’ philosophical opposition to certain environmental rules and standards is, without question, a factor in determining which rules are being targeted, a CAP analysis finds that an industry’s or a company’s political contributions and political connections to members of Congress appears to have an oversized, but underreported, role in influencing Congress’s prioritization of its CRA attacks. In fact, the legislative procedure through which CRA resolutions are considered makes this area of legislative activity particularly vulnerable to influence from campaign contributions and behind-the-scenes lobbying activities.

Which environmental rules is Congress scrapping—and why?

We examined each of the four CRA resolutions that have received votes by at least one chamber in this new Congress to better understand special interests’ role in pushing for their repeal. Below is a summary of our findings:

1. The**Stream Protection**Rule:Issued by the U.S. Department of the Interior to better protect communities downstream of coal mining operations whose drinking water is at-risk from toxic pollutants.

2. The rule to**end corruption in oil operations**:Formally known as the Disclosure of Payments by Resource Extraction Issuers Rule, this regulation from the Security and Exchange Commission limits international corruption and bribery by requiring oil and gas companies to disclose payments they make to foreign governments to purchase drilling rights.

3. The**:{Methane:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}::{ and Waste Prevention:(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}:**Rule:Issued by the BLM to limit venting, flaring, and leaking of methane from oil and gas operations on public land to curb waste of taxpayer dollars and cut air pollution.

4. The**Planning 2.0**rule:Issued by the BLM and aimed at protecting the voice of local communities in public lands management decisions.

The striking commonality among these rules is the scale of the campaign contributions and the political connections of the affected industries to the sponsors of the legislation. Thus far, industries that have succeeded in having Congress overturn an environmental rule have donated an average of $2.3 million to the sponsors of the CRA resolutions in both chambers.

How the CRA turns Congress into an auction house for special interests

This column, of course, is not the first piece of analysis to conclude that campaign contributions and lobbying muscle influence outcomes in Congress. What is new, however, is the extent to which special interests are able to game the parliamentary procedures associated with the CRA. In essence, oil, gas, and coal companies are purchasing the deletion of environmental rules through political contributions.

Congress’s vulnerability to financial influence under the CRA is rooted in the law’s obscure procedure for overturning regulations. Since its passage in 1996, the CRA has given Congress the power to overturn any regulation within 60 legislative days of it being issued by an executive branch agency. To successfully overturn a rule, both chambers of Congress must pass, by majority vote, a resolution of disapproval and then have the president sign it. On a practical level, however, it is only after a change of administration—and only if the new president and a new Congress both wish to undo actions taken by the previous administration—that CRA resolutions become likely to pass. Before this year, Congress had only used the CRA successfully to overturn a single regulation: a Clinton administration rule to establish ergonomics standards in the workplace.

For Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Speaker Paul Ryan, the CRA provides opportunities and limitations that are different than other types of legislation. Notably, the CRA gives the new Congress only 60 legislative days to overturn rules issued by the Obama administration, and those rules must have been finalized within 60 legislative days of the end of the last Congress. According to the Congressional Research Service, 61 “major” rules and regulations—the U.S. government defines major rules as those that would have an annual effect on the economy of at least $100 million—that the Obama administration finalized after June 13, 2016, are eligible to be overturned by Congress using the CRA. The CRA, however, can be used to overturn any rule—regardless of the scale of its economic benefits or costs—that was finalized in this period. By one lobbying firm’s count, more than 2,300 rules are currently eligible to be overturned under the CRA.

The parliamentary procedures prescribed by the CRA, however, create practical limits on how many rules Congress can overturn. In the Senate, for example, each CRA resolution is allocated up to 10 hours of debate, meaning that—even if the Senate worked around the clock for its first 60 days—it would only be able to overturn a small fraction of the rules that are eligible to be challenged.

Therefore, Majority Leader McConnell and Speaker Ryan must decide which CRA-eligible rules from the Obama administration they most want to repeal. They have to prioritize. Unlike a normal piece of legislation that would require 60 votes to pass the Senate, however, Majority Leader McConnell and Speaker Ryan do not have to worry about which CRA resolutions might garner bipartisan support. They can overturn any CRA-eligible rule through simple majority votes in both chambers.

For special interests, these circumstances are a windfall. They simply need to persuade leadership in the House and Senate to put their favored CRA-resolution at the top of the stack. Through political contributions, lobbying, and insider connections, oil, gas, and coal companies have been working feverishly since November 8 to convince Congressional leaders to prioritize the dismantling of their chosen rules. Exxon Mobil and Chevron, for example, were among the largest corporate donors to the inauguration festivities that Congress hosted in January, giving a reported half a million dollars each. Congressional lobbying disclosure forms also reveal that, in the fourth quarter of 2016, Exxon Mobil increased the size of its contract with a key anti-regulatory lobbyist and directed her to target her work on the BLM methane waste reduction rule.

Which environmental rules will Congress sell out next?

With the clock ticking on Congress’ ability to scrap rules and standards issued in the final months of the Obama administration, Republican leaders in the House and Senate have yet to confirm all of the CRA resolutions on environment and energy rules they will bring to the floor.

Will the Senate overturn restrictions on killing hibernating bears and on hunting wolves from helicopters in Alaska’s national wildlife refuges? Will the House weaken protectionsagainst the poaching of African elephants? Or will congressional leaders seek to eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency’s recent update to ozone pollution standards?

Based on the early pattern of CRA votes, which rules stay and go may ultimately be decided over fundraising receptions, dinners, and ski trips in the coming weeks. In these venues, with members of Congress as their audience, corporations and lobbyists will compete with each other to win coveted time for their targeted rule in Congress. Will the American Petroleum Institute’s push to roll back air pollution protections beat out Safari Club International’s campaign to resume the importation of elephant tusks? Will the National Mining Association’s desire to allow coal companies to dodge royalties triumph over the Western Energy Alliance’s wish to curtail public input on public land management decisions?

This frenzy over the CRA will be unseemly and unsavory—a grim form of March Madness in which some industries’ lobbyists will win, some lobbyists will lose, and every American will be saddled with the costs of more pollution and weaker consumer protections.

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https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2017/02/freshman-lawmakers-debt/

Donald Trump has said, often and with great pride, that he is “the king of debt.”

That’s not a distinction any congressional campaign is gunning for, though, and most manage to avoid it.

The median campaign debt for a member of the 115th House of Representatives as of Nov. 28: Zero.

But a look at just the freshmen members of the class tells a different story:

Their median debt was $73,893. And the 10 most indebted freshmen at that point,

detailed in the chart below, had a median campaign debt of about $444,000.

DATES REFER TO FEC REPORTING PERIODS.

When it comes to winning a first term in Congress, amassing debt is often unavoidable.

“For freshmen it just happens, because that’s what you have to do to get elected,” said Meredith McGehee, chief of policy, programs and strategy at Issue One. “Once you’re an established incumbent, you’re not expected to go into debt unless you have a very competitive race.”

But all that debt can pay off, as winning brings rewards. Corporate and other political action committees, though they may be reluctant to invest in the campaigns of unfamiliar faces, are often happy to lavish congressional newcomers with attention and money once they’ve secured their seats.

“Freshman members can call up these people and say, ‘Hey, I’m new here in Congress, and I know you want to build a relationship with me. Here’s a way to start doing this,'” said Every Voice’s Adam Smith.

And PACs may have a preference for the shiny new lawmaker. In the weeks after the 2016 election, that translated to relatively high rates of contributions from PACs to the 10 indebted freshmenas compared to the 10 most indebted incumbents. Between the election and Dec. 31, the incumbents received, on average, contributions from two PACs for a total of less than $4,000. The average for the 10 freshmen, on the other hand, was a total of almost $22,000 from 10 contributing PACs. Excluding freshman Rep. Francis Rooney (R-Fla.), who received no post-election PAC money, bumps those numbers up to 11 PACs and nearly $24,000 in contributions.

(Note that these values exclude contributions of $200 or less, and omit the handful of refunds issued from campaign committees to PACs for donations given before Election Day.)

Rep. Paul Mitchell (R-Mich.) received $39,500 from PACs after the election, the highest total among the 10 indebted freshmen. He netted $2,500 from :{Comcast Corp.’s:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}: PAC, which gave a combined $15,000 to him and Reps. Trey Hollingsworth (R-Ind.), Lloyd Smucker (R-Pa.), Neal Dunn (R-Fla.), John Bergman (R-Mich.) and Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.) from Nov. 9 through Dec. 31.

But Comcast wasn’t the most generous PAC in the post-election landscape: That honor went to the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, the trade group for the cable industry. It gave a total of $21,000 spread out between five of the candidates — all of them Republican.

Overall, 64 PACs gave to at least one of the 10 freshmen after the election, for a total of over $218,000. The top seven (there’s a nine-way tie for eighth place):

The leading donors were a mixed bag of corporate and leadership PACs, which are formed by members of Congress and used, in part, to donate to other lawmakers to build loyalty and support. Over the course of the entire 2016 campaign cycle, the House Conservatives Fund, tied to Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), doled out almost $297,000 to federal candidates; House Speaker Paul Ryan‘s (R-Wis.) Prosperity Action gave more than $1.3 million. Less prolific was Rep. Joe Barton‘s (R-Texas) Texas Freedom Fund, which contributed $33,000 to federal candidates throughout the cycle — meaning that it made about 18 percent of its total contributions after the election.

The two Democrats in the group of freshmen —  Blunt Rochester and Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (Texas) — averaged a lower total of PAC contributions after the election (under $18,000) than did the Republicans (nearly $22,500, which includes Rooney’s $0). With Republicans sweeping Congress and the White House, getting in the GOP’s good graces seems to have been a priority.

The self-funder

One reason many of the campaigns of the freshmen on our list were so deeply in debt: They owed money to the candidates themselves. PACs may give plenty, but what’s more reliable than your own bank account, assuming you’re well-enough off to spare the funds?

The median amount of money that the 10 freshmen loaned themselves as candidates over the course of the entire 2016 cycle was around $527,000. The median sum that they paid back to themselves, usually with funds from their donors, was roughly $27,000.

Why use the median rather than the average? The answer is simple, and it comes from the Midwest: GOP Reps. Paul Mitchell (R-Mich.) and Trey Hollingsworth (R-Ind.) both had accumulated more than $3 million in self-loans by election’s end, and therefore significantly skew the group’s average upward. What’s more, the saga of Mitchell and Hollingsworth’s debts highlights the fact that although repayments to these freshmen from their own campaigns were effectively negligible, the lawmakers had other means of decreasing debt. By the end of 2016, the $3.1 million that Mitchell owed to himself after the election had dwindled to just $30,000 without any corresponding repayments — indicating that he had forgiven most of his loans. The same was mostly true for Hollingsworth; the amount his campaign owed him fell from over $3 million to $60,000, though he made repayments of only around $43,000. Neither Mitchell nor Hollingsworth responded to requests for comment.

(Across the aisle, similarly, Gonzalez’ year-end report made no mention of his nearly $1.9 million in self-loans — none of which his campaign committee repaid.)

McGehee called the practice of candidates lending money to their own campaigns “pretty much standard operating procedure” for many with the resources to do it. The financial strain of mounting a congressional campaign is one reason why deep-pocketed candidates often scare away challengers.

That financial burden becomes a bit easier to bear when money starts flowing in; and some, like Smucker, relied heavily on funds from campaign donors to recoup the money they’d lent. In the 2016 cycle, Smucker lent himself $590,000 and made almost $236,000 in repayments — a notably larger amount than Hollingsworth’s. Mitchell and Gonzalez didn’t pay themselves back a penny.

Researcher Doug Weber contributed to this post.

Categories: Campaign finance Congress Congressional Elections Influence & Lobbying Leadership PACs PACsPolitical Parties Politicians & Elections

Tags: campaign committees, campaign finance, debt, democrats, freshmen, house, house of representatives, incumbents, Niv sultan, pacs, Paul Ryan, representatives, republicans, trump

Comments (Comment Guidelines)

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https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/01/05/koch-reins-act-congress-trump

One of the first orders of business for the freshly convened 115th Congress — now that it's no longer attempting to gut an independent ethics office  — is to pass a bill which could weaken the ability of federal regulatory agencies to do their jobs.

That law, the REINS (Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny) Act of 2017, has long been a legislative priority for Koch Industries, Koch-funded advocacy groups such as Americans for Prosperity, and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Its latest iteration, H.R. 26*, has the backing of Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) and 159 co-sponsors (five Democrats and 154 Republicans) and has reached full debate on the House floor.***

REINS dictates that a “major rule shall not take effect unless the Congress enacts a joint resolution of approval” and won't become law if Congress does not pass that resolution by “70 session days or legislative days, as applicable.”

President Barack Obama's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) came out against the 2015 version of the REINS Act.

The OMB pointed toward the myriad existing safeguards that already ensure regulatory agency accountability, including the federal court system, the fact that many regulatory proposals actually stem from laws passed by Congress, and the requirement for robust public commenting periods.

“This radical departure from the longstanding separation of powers between the Executive and Legislative branches would delay and, in many cases, thwart implementation of statutory mandates and execution of duly-enacted laws, create business uncertainty, undermine much-needed protections of the American public, and cause unnecessary confusion,” OMBwrote in July 2015.

“By replacing this well-established framework with a blanket requirement of Congressional approval, H.R. 427 would throw all major regulations into a months-long limbo, fostering uncertainty and impeding business investment that is vital to economic growth.”

Image Credit: White House Office of Management and Budget

A DeSmog investigation shows that Koch Industries and its front groups have been behind the earliest pushes to pass the REINS Act.

“Obama Chart”

Tellingly, the only person President-elect Donald Trump has spoken to on the record about REINS is Phil Kerpen, president of the think-tank American Commitment. According to his LinkedIn profile, Kerpen worked for more than five years as Vice President of Policy for the Koch-founded and Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity (AFP).

“I will sign the REINS Act should it reach my desk as President and more importantly I will work hard to get it passed,” Trump said in a statement for Kerpen's December 30, 2016 op-ed.

“The monstrosity that is the Federal Government with its pages and pages of rules and regulations has been a disaster for the American economy and job growth. The REINS Act is one major step toward getting our government under control.”

Kerpen's post was titled, “It's time to rein in regulators.”

In his 2011 book Democracy Denied: How Obama is Ignoring You and Bypassing Congress to Radically Transform America - and How to Stop Him, written while he still worked for AFP, Kerpen devoted an entire chapter in support of REINS.

During that time, AFP also ran ObamaChart.com, a website DeSmog tracked down using internet archives, which depicted the REINS legislation as the solution for reversing “how it has become standard procedure in the Obama administration not to take no for an answer.”

Image credit: Way Back Machine

In the introduction to Democracy Denied, Kerpen says the book “is an extended commentary on the chart,” with the REINSAct serving as a panacea for the problem he claims exists.

“Support for the REINS Act needs to be a basic litmus test for candidates for the House of Representatives, Senate, and president of the United States,” wrote Kerpen in his book. “Candidates who refuse to promise to restore accountability for legislative decisions to Congress are not worthy of support.”

Fast-forwarding to today, Kerpen and American Commitment have launched a social media push for REINS, purchased the web domain REINSAct.com in July 2015, and started an online petition campaign advocating for REINS' passage, which to date has garnered over 113,000 signatures.

[vid]

Koch Lobbying

According to lobbying disclosure forms, Koch Industries began lobbying on the REINS Act in the third quarter of **2010**. Joining Koch were the likes of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Heritage Foundation's Heritage Action for America.

That same year, congressional Republicans issued their “Pledge to America” before the mid-term elections, which included the basic tenets of REINS and even included the word “rein.”

The Koch brothers spent millions of dollars to elect Republicans during that landmark electoral cycle, which saw Republicans take a majority in the U.S. House, pick up 680 statehouse seats, and win six gubernatorial elections.

“We will rein in the red tape factory in Washington, DC by requiring congressional approval of any new federal regulation that may add to our deficit and make it harder to create jobs,” promised congressional Republicans.

In 2012, the new congressional session introduced REINS once again, this time with much more backing from industry lobbyists. Koch, Heritage, and the Chamber of Commerce were joined this time around by Peabody Energy, Duke Energy, Arch Coal, Southern Company, ExxonMobil, Marathon Oil, and others.

Also in 2012, ALEC — which is funded by and which provides a corporate bill mill forum for all of these players — passed a model resolution in support of REINS.

For more recent versions of the bill, the oil and gas industry at large have now come on board through the American Petroleum Institute and the Western Energy Alliance (WEA).

“The bill provides common-sense ways to ensure regulatory accountability to the American people through their elected representatives and to reduce the unintended negative consequences of new regulations on economic and job growth,” wrote WEA in an April 2015 letter.

Coming full circle, KochIndustries and AFP lobbied for a state-level version of the REINS Act in 2015 in Wisconsin, according to the state's lobbying disclosure database. The bill, Assembly Bill 251, passed in the State Assembly but not in the Senate and was just re-introduced for the 2017 session.

On December 20, 2016, AFP included passage of the REINS Act in its list of “7 Things That Should Be On Everyone’s Wishlist for Our New Congress” and on January 4, the group published a press release calling for its passage, while Kerpen posted an article saying “We were never closer to seeing REINS Act become law.”

During his presidential campaign, Trump referred to Republicans reliant on Koch money as “puppets” and said he turned down a meeting with the Koch brothers. Yet, the Trump administration is increasingly loaded with Koch allies.

“Dream About”

Not everyone, however, is thrilled with the REINS Act. In a January 4 letter written to Speaker Ryan and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, the Center for American Progress (CAP) said that if the REINS Act passes, it would be akin to a “shutdown” of federal regulatory agencies.

“By requiring an affirmative vote by Congress for a regulation to become effective, and allowing non-action to result, effectively, in a veto of those regulations, the REINS Act is for all intents and purposes a shutdown of the regulatory branch of the Federal government,” wrote CAP. “Congress should do its job and protect the public, not hand the government over to corporate and special interests.”

The Natural Resources Defense Council has also denounced the bill.

Ryan, however, feels his party has a mandate to pass legislation such as the REINS Act. In the address he gave after being announced Speaker of the House for the 115th Congress, Ryan called the three branches of GOP-controlled government a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

[img]

“This is the kind of thing that most of us only dream about. I know — because I used to dream about it,” said Ryan. “The people have given us unified government. And it wasn’t because they were feeling generous. It’s because they wanted results.”

*Update: On the U.S. Senate side of things REINS has also been introduced as S.21 and has 27 co-sponsors.27 co-sponsors.

**Update: Though it has yet to pass in the House, Koch-funded front group FreedomWorks already has a URL in placecelebrating the passage of REINS, which popped up via Google Alerts.

==

http://www.alternet.org/labor/kentuckys-attack-unions-provides-glimpse-gops-impending-war-workers

...

For 95 years—all the way back to 1921, when Warren G. Harding was president—Kentucky Democrats had maintained control of the state House of Representatives.

When Tea Party darling Matt Bevin, who ran as the “right-to-work” candidate, rode the national GOP wave and succeeded Democratic Governor Steve Beshear in 2014, the Kentucky House became the sole bulwark blocking the implementation of his anti-union agenda. Naturally, heading into the 2016 elections, the right wing turned all its firepower against the Democrats’ six-seat house majority. It worked—and it wasn’t even close. Republicans won an astounding 13 seats to gain a commanding 64-36 majority, making Kentucky one of 25 states with GOP trifecta-control.

It didn’t take long for Republican legislators to introduce their stable of anti-union measures: a right-to-work bill that bans unions from requiring mandatory dues for all workers covered by their contracts; a repeal of the state’s prevailing wage law, meaning that public construction projects would no longer be required to pay their workers based on a community survey (usually meaning a union pay-scale); and banning public-employee unions from striking and from using member dues for political contributions.

It’s also the first of many attacks on unions that will materialize during the Trump presidency.With Democrats completely out of power, unions had little recourse—beyond workers protesting in the chambers—to combat the legislative onslaught. Over the weekend, Republicans passed all three bills (in addition to a 20-week abortion ban) with emergency clauses ensuring they would be implemented immediately after Bevin signs them into law. Kentucky is now the 27th right-to-work state, and the last state in the South to pass such a law. “It’s an attack on the working people,” Chris Kendall, a member of a Kentucky Plumbers and Steamfitters Union local told the Lexington Herald-Leader as he protested right-to-work at the state capitol in Frankfort on Saturday. “It’s almost like we’re the enemy somehow, that it’s the politicians against us. And all we’re trying to do is earn an honest day’s wage.”

In public, conservatives argue that right-to-work is about ensuring freedom in the workplace by using fear-mongering rhetoric about mandatory union membership. But they fail to mention that, by law, union membership can’t be mandatory; it’s the payment of union dues for collective bargaining services—which benefit all workers in unionized shops—that is required with union security clauses. The reality, as research consistently shows, is that, on average, workers make less—about 3.1 percent—in states with right-to-work laws compared with states without those laws. Right-to-work’s other effect is to create a “free rider” problem for unions, which are forced to provide services for all workers in union shops without any compensation from the non-members they bargain for and represent in disputes with management.

Conservatives also argue that prevailing wage laws are a leading cause of bloated government spending. What surveys have shown, however, is that there are no adverse affects associated with government projects that pay a prevailing wage.

Attacking unions is a top GOP priority not because of actual concern for workers or public services. Rather, it’s about undermining the left’s most effective tool for convincing working people to vote for more pro-worker candidates, who are almost invariably Democratic, and curtailing unions’ ability to finance Democratic candidates. Right-to-work laws and bans on political contributions from dues are primarily about draining unions’ coffers and breaking up concentrated worker power.

Kentucky was once a union stronghold, thanks to strong membership density in the state’s heavy-industry sectors like coal mining and manufacturing. But, as those types of jobs have disappeared and the GOP’s war on unions ramped up, Kentucky’s union membership dramatically eroded—a trend that has played out across the country. The state’s union membership reached its peak in 1989, but has fallen since then. In 2015, 11 percent of Kentucky’s workforce— about 187,000 workers—was unionized, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Right-to-work will only further accelerate that decline.

With Trump’s win and the GOP’s continuing majorities in the House and Senate, the party now has unified federal control for the first time since 2006—and in those 10 years, the party’s anti-union strain has become even more mainstream and vitriolic. Republicans in the House and Senate will soon begin pushing for a national right-to-work law and a repeal of the Davis Bacon Act (the federal prevailing wage), bringing to the national stage what has for the past decade been limited to state-level fights. Trump has already indicated his support for a national right-to-work law and his top allies, from Vice President-elect Mike Pence on down, have close ties to the Kochs’ anti-union political crusade in the states.The Bevin-led attack on Kentucky workers comes straight out of the right-wing playbook for states. Since the 2010 elections, Republicans, with ample funding from the Koch brothers, have pushed through right-to-work and prevailing wage repeals in such former union strongholds as Indiana, Michigan, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. With statehouse gains in 2016, Republicans are also expected to pass right-to-work measures in Missouri and New Hampshire. But that’s not all.

The challenge for unions in a right-to-work landscape becomes a battle for relevance—and convincing members that the services unions provide are still important. Whether they can do that in Kentucky, and soon, nationwide, is a question that looms large for the future of the labor movement. Justin Miller is a writing fellow for The American Prospect.

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omg

death star;

kind of like anti-kyoto, prop 23 does not go straight at regulations  (that most ppl wpuld approve of, like clean air) but neurtralizes if hurts economy, or in reins, req second step to implement thus kills

And it's not just the transition team that's looking for help from Koch minions—it's Trump himself. As Steve Horn reported in DeSmog, the only person Trump spoke to on the record about a big anti-regulatory act that's been on the Kochs' agenda for years was Phil Kerpen, former vice president of policy for Americans for Prosperity.The REINS Act just passed the House on Jan. 5.

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The House of Representatives is poised to pass the REINS Act. This bill would prevent agencies like the EPA from taking any major action to protect our planet unless both houses of Congress approve it. It would hold common-sense protections for the environment hostage to the Big Polluters bankrolling our lawmakers.

:{

}:

--

https://newrepublic.com/article/120228/what-expect-gop-war-epa

2014

...The GOP’s plans for environmental regulation are hardly a secret. The Senate’s new leadership includes a majority leader who promised he would “get the EPA reined in,” an environmental chairman who thinks global warming is a hoax, and a newly elected senator who would like to eliminate the EPA altogether.

Their most publicized plan is to derail the Obama administration’s proposed cuts to carbon pollution, but there are plenty of other, lesser-known EPA targets that are equally at risk. Republicans are attempting to…

Fight Ozone Reduction

The EPA will announce new regulations that lower the existing standard for ozone, or smog, from a current level of 75 parts per billion, which scientists say is too high to protect public health. Exactly how ambitious this proposal is won’t be known for a few weeks. But GOP leadership has already pledged to prevent it. South Dakota Senator John Thune proposed a bill that would block any new standard until there is 85 percent compliance with the old one.

Limit the Clean Water Act

This spring, the EPA proposed a rule to answer a question that has lingered for at least a decade: Which streams and wetlands does the 42-year-old Clean Water Act protect? The EPA’s rule makes previously unregulated waters subject to new pollution restrictions—and that has made conservatives furious. The EPA  says these streams and wetlands are important to both drinking water supplies and wildlife. There are already 30 Republican senators who have already signed onto legislation to prevent this rule.

Allow Congress to Block Major Regulations

There is a little-known bill that could bring the entire regulatory process to a standstill. It’s called the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act and would require any regulation costing the economy over $100 million a year to also pass an up-or-down vote in Congress. If Congress doesn’t hold a vote within 70 days, the regulation dies. This gives a Republican Congress direct control of regulations that are all well within the EPA’s authority to enact—thanks to Congress’ own Clean Air and Water Acts. Mitch McConnell hasn’t hinted what his plans might be on this bill, which already passed the House of Representatives last year. Kentucky’s junior Senator Rand Paul alreadysupports it.

Stall Coal Regulations With Numbers Games

Ever since the EPA hiked the assessed cost of health, property, and climate damage caused by carbon pollution—from $22 to $36 per ton—Republicans have challenged its calculation. The House has already passed a bill that prohibits the EPA from considering the benefits of avoiding carbon pollution unless a federal law allows it. The social cost of carbon forms the basis for a number of coal regulations, so by challenging this calculation, the GOP hopes to stall the EPA’s plans.

Block Carbon Pollution Regulation

McConnell has already hinted at the ways he hopes to block the EPA’s draft rule to cut power plant pollution 30 percent by 2030. The GOP still faces a Democratic minority capable of filibustering legislation, and of course Obama’s veto. But McConnell has suggested the GOP will limit the EPA by attaching policy riders to must-pass appropriations bills, raising the stakes even at the risk of a government shutdown. “It will be hard because the only good tool to do that ... is through the spending process, and if [Obama] feels strongly enough about it, he can veto the bill,” McConnell said in a recent interview with the *Lexington Herald-Leader*.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/115th_United_States_Congress

The One Hundred Fifteenth United States Congress is the current meeting of the legislative branch of the United States federal government, composed of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives. It is scheduled to meet in Washington, D.C. from January 3, 2017 to January 3, 2019, during the final weeks of the Obama presidency and the first two years of the Trump presidency. The elections of November 2016 maintained Republican control of both the House and Senate.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/claiming-mandate-gop-congress-lays-plans-to-propel-sweeping-conservative-agenda/2017/01/01/

...In his first news conference after the election, Ryan said that voters had delivered a mandate for “unified Republican government.” Eight years earlier, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) had said only that Americans “voted in large numbers for change” and said the White House would be driving the agenda.

This year’s agenda from House and Senate Republicans has clarity that was often lacking from Trump’s own campaign. Senate Republicans favor using a procedure known as “budget reconciliation,” in which measures can be passed with a simple 51-vote majority rather than a filibuster-proof 60 votes, to tackle the ACA and to undo much of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform.

As part of undoing the financial overhaul law, some GOP leaders have begun planning strategies for how to effectively kill the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, whether by giving Congress control over its budget or finding cause to replace its director, Richard Cordray, with a weaker board.

“I’d like to repeal the whole thing, period,” Senate Banking Committee Chairman Richard C. Shelby said of Dodd-Frank in a December interview with the Wall Street Journal.

The reconciliation process is also likely to be used to pass tax changes, which both Trump and congressional Republicans want to use to lower rates and end the estate tax.

Republicans also are examining ways to undo many of the regulations and other orders enacted by Obama and his administration, including ones issued in the weeks since Trump’s victory and designed to solidify the Democratic president’s environmental legacy.

GOP leaders have cited the 21-year old Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to cast simple majority votes of disapproval for regulations, as a way to block anything the administration has ordered since June 2016.

Since its passage, the CRA has been used only once. But in December, the conservative House Freedom Caucus began compiling a list of more than 200 regulations it views as vulnerable to a disapproval vote. They include “burdensome” school lunch standards, tobacco regulations, laws that set higher wages for contractors and elements of the Paris climate-change agreement.

“Talking to some individuals with the Trump transition team, they are taking this extremely serious[ly],” Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), chairman of the Freedom Caucus, told the Heritage Foundation last month.

Republicans intend to supplement the CRA by enacting a law that would subject any regulation with an economic impact greater than $100 million to a vote of Congress, a change that would have prevented nearly every climate or employment rule change of the Obama years. The measure, called the Regulations From the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act, or Reins, is a conservative priority that passed the Republican House in 2011, 2013 and 2015 with backing from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Republican aides now hope for a vote on Reins in the coming days so it can be sent for Trump’s signature immediately after he is sworn in on Jan. 20.

Some Republican lawmakers also want legislation that would stop courts from deferring to federal agencies’ interpretations of statutes — a practice known as “Chevron deference,” after the 1984 Supreme Court case that went against the energy company — and have them instead defer to Congress.

Little of this was discussed during the presidential campaign, and none has much buy-in from Democrats. Just one rural Democrat in the 115th Congress, Rep. Collin C. Peterson of Minnesota, voted for Reins. But Democrats do not see the next few months playing out for them the way the first half of 2009 played out for Republicans.

“I think there was a unique benefit to Republicans in obstructing the Obama agenda,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who served in the House in Obama’s first term and arrived in the Senate in 2013. “In 2008, Obama’s entire premise was built on fixing Washington by ending partisanship. It was dependent on getting two parties to work together. Mitch McConnell figured out quickly that he alone held the keys to success or lack of success.”

Democrats, said Murphy, would oppose Republicans where they can. But they are not in a position to block everything. “Trump pays lip service to bringing people together, but his theme is that ‘only he can fix it,’?” he said. “That’s about results, not whether Washington is ‘working,’ so there’s not the same political benefit to pure obstruction.”

Instead, Democrats see opportunities on issues on which Trump clashed with his party or where Republicans themselves worry that the party’s position is unpopular. One of them is the Defund Planned Parenthood Act, which sailed through the House in 2015. Last month, when Obama issued an order halting state efforts to defund the group, the legislation’s sponsor, Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.), said new “pro-life majorities in Congress” would “not only roll back this latest overreach but also enact new legal protections for these most vulnerable members of our society.”

Trump, who became antiabortion late in life, sent mixed messages about Planned Parenthood, praising its non-abortion work in televised debates. That, say Democrats and abortion rights advocates, suggests a wedge can be shoved between the Republican Congress and the president. “Trump didn’t run on, nor was he elected to act on, attacking reproductive health care,” said Ericka Sackin, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood.

There’s less clarity about how to respond on other Republican priorities. Legislation to allow concealed weapons to be carried across state lines, a major goal of the National Rifle Association, was endorsed by Trump and may be hard for red-state Democrats to oppose.

A possible Trump-backed stimulus package intrigued even blue-state Democrats when it was floated in November. Interest waned when, in lieu of detailed spending plans, Trump allies suggested the stimulus would consist of tax breaks.

In the short term, Democrats are focused more on Trump’s Cabinet picks and the looming Supreme Court nomination. In 2009, 59 Democratic senators were occasionally bogged down in getting the 60th vote to confirm lower-level Obama appointees such as Tom Perez as an assistant attorney general at the Justice Department and Harold Koh as a legal adviser at State.

In 2017, thanks to Democrats’ change of the filibuster, Republicans no longer need to get 60 votes for cloture on nominees; they need a simple majority for any administration position or any judicial opening lower than the Supreme Court. This, Democrats admit, will give Republicans more running room and more floor time to pass bills. Shellshocked after being defeated in an election few people expected they could lose, some concede that Trump’s ability to command media attention will make it harder to turn their losing congressional battles into headlines....

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http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-congress-opener-20170103-story.html

A Republican-controlled Congress opens Tuesday with the most sweeping conservative agenda in decades, providing Donald Trump ample room to gut the Affordable Care Act, slash corporate tax rates and undo Obama-era environmental regulations.

The House is almost certain to reelect Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) as its first order of business, dispensing with the messy political infighting that has hobbled Republicans in the past.

And the Senate will swiftly begin vetting the president-elect’s most controversial Cabinet picks, ready to confirm some when Trump is inaugurated as president on Jan. 20.

Yet Republicans remain at odds on some high-profile issues — such as how aggressively to investigate Russian hacking in the 2016 election — and how to fulfill other big-ticket promises, such as replacing Obamacare.

Despite firm Republican control of both the White House and Congress, the internal disputes have left them without a clear plan yet for Trump’s first 100 days, or an endgame for the two years of the 115th Congress.

Trump’s often shifting views on major issues will test relations with GOP’s leaders on Capitol Hill, and his willingness to skirt ideological rigidity gives incoming Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer of New York and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco an opening to influence and shape the president’s evolving agenda.

Will the Fed's Janet Yellen 'take away the punch bowl' after Trump takes office?]

President Obama will visit Capitol Hill on Wednesday to meet with Democrats bracing for their new role, not just as the minority party, but as the main roadblock preventing Trump from dismantling the healthcare law and other parts of the Obama agenda.

Republicans will also assemble behind closed doors. Vice President-elect Mike Pence, who was a popular conservative congressman before he was elected governor of Indiana, is likely to serve as a crucial link between the Trump administration and its allies in Congress.

Given Trump’s inexperience in government, Pence is expected to play an enhanced role, perhaps like the one former Vice President Richard Cheney held under President George W. Bush.

At a minimum, Pence could provide a vital conduit between the untested new president and his more ideological party members in Congress, especially as Ryan’s own relationship with Trump has been strained.

Ryan flip-flopped over Trump — first withholding his endorsement, then ultimately campaigning for him — but the speaker insists he and the president-elect have let bygones pass as they talk almost daily on their plans for fulfilling Republican promises to voters.

“Very soon after the race, Donald and I said: ‘Look, this is fantastic. We have so much to do. Let's forget about, you know, any differences in the past and let's get working on this agenda,’” Ryan said recently on Fox News. “And that's exactly what we've been doing from -- that day on.”

Once Trump takes office, Republicans will face enormous pressure to score some legislative wins after six years of trying to block most of Obama’s initiatives.

Lawmakers will vote this week on low-hanging fruit -- a popular GOP measure to rein in the executive branch by requiring congressional approval for new federal regulations with an economic impact of more than $100 million.

The measure, which passed the Republican House three times since 2011, is a GOP priority. Its supporters say it would have prevented nearly all the climate and employment rule changes of the Obama era.

Republicans are also expected to punish Democrats for last year’s gun control sit-in, led by civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), by imposing new rules that would slap up to $2,500 fines on lawmakers who film such floor protests from smartphones or other devices.

Whether that would pass judicial review is less clear. Opponents say the proposed ban is clearly unconstitutional.

But the GOP’s top promise — to end Obamacare — remains a tough haul.

Votes are expected in coming days on legislation to begin repealing the Affordable Care Act. But these first steps will be largely symbolic while lawmakers debate the details of dismantling the healthcare law.

With 20 million Americans now benefiting from Obamacare, the GOP’s gutting of it comes with an asterisk.

Republicans are also likely to postpone fully dismantling the healthcare law until they can sort out their own ideas for a yet-to-be-determined alternative.

That could push a full Obamacare repeal and replace until 2018 or 2019, after the midterm elections.

“Repeal and delay, it doesn’t even have alliteration,” Pelosi scoffed on a conference call Monday with reporters. “It’s an admission that it’s a lot for them to lose politically.”

[

Donald Trump's newest branding endeavor: the economy

Similarly, Republicans are still working out the details of tax reform beyond the lower rates proposed in the House GOP’s “Better Way” blueprint agenda for the new year.

Ryan will almost certainly reemerge as speaker in Tuesday’s floor vote. But his leadership remains constrained by the same internal party divisions that hobbled his predecessor, John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), and that have prevented Republicans from making gains on a cohesive agenda.

Those divisions surfaced late Monday when Republicans split during a closed-door session over a proposal to gut a congressional ethics office at a time when Trump has promised to come to Washington and “drain the swamp.” Approval of the proposal signaled a rocky start to the new session.

Democrats, despite being in the minority in both the House and Senate, will be more than bit players in the new Washington environment.

Senate Democrats are planning a robust grilling of Trump’s Cabinet choices, particularly Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), the conservative orthopedic doctor who has been tapped to helm the Health and Human Services Department and the Obamacare unraveling. COI?

Democrats are also lining up against Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) as attorney general, and have raised questions about ExxonMobil chief executive Rex Tillerson, who has substantial ties with Russia, as secretary of State.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) intends to have several of Trump’s Cabinet picks – likely the national security team -- cleared for quick confirmation after Trump takes office.

But McConnell faces his own difficulty as several top Republicans, including Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, are pushing for an aggressive investigation in Congress of Russian cyber-attacks during the presidential race. McCain plans to hold his first hearing on the issue Thursday.

McConnell has resisted calls by a bipartisan group, led by McCain and Schumer, for creation of a separate special committee – or an independent panel like the bipartisan commission that investigated the terrorist attacks after Sept. 11, 2001.

Many Republicans are optimistic for the days ahead, ready to “hit the ground running,” Ryan has said.

Congress adjusted its calendar to work more, with several five-day work weeks in the House as it races to deliver on election promises. Normally the House is in session only four days a week.

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note only opposes timing:

https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-01-03/house-gop-votes-to-strip-ethics-office-of-independent-status

House Republicans dropped their bid to weaken the independent Office of Congressional Ethics after President-elect Donald Trump blasted the move as counter to his call to "drain the swamp" of corruption in Washington.

The amendment was stripped from a rules package by voice vote, three lawmakers said, in a last-minute meeting called Tuesday as criticism mounted. The controversy over the office that investigates lawmakers’ alleged misconduct was starting to overshadow the opening of the 115th Congress, normally a day of glad-handing as lawmakers bring family members to the floor to join the festivities.

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Donald J. Trump ?@realDonaldTrump

With all that Congress has to work on, do they really have to make the weakening of the Independent Ethics Watchdog, as unfair as it

7:03 AM - 3 Jan 2017

 5,5335,533 Retweets  17,96517,965 likes

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Donald J. Trump ?@realDonaldTrump

........may be, their number one act and priority. Focus on tax reform, healthcare and so many other things of far greater importance! #DTS

7:07 AM - 3 Jan 2017

 5,0345,034 Retweets  18,74118,741 likes

"We have got just a tremendous number of calls to our office here and district offices concerned about this," said Representative Walter Jones, a North Carolina Republican.

The House GOP voted behind closed doors Monday night to make the independent office “subject to oversight” by the House Ethics Committee and significantly restrict its powers. The three lawmakers who confirmed the amendment was dropped were Mo Brooks of Alabama, Darrell Issa of California and Bill Flores of Texas.

“People could have concerns” after Trump criticized the GOP’s move, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California told reporters before the meeting.

“With all that Congress has to work on, do they really have to make the weakening of the Independent Ethics Watchdog, as unfair as it may be, their number one act and priority,” Trump wrote on Twitter Tuesday morning. “Focus on tax reform, healthcare and so many other things of far greater importance!’ He closed his tweet with “#DTS,” a reference to his campaign promise to “drain the swamp."

The change was to be part of a broader House rules package that the House plans to approve Tuesday as members open the 115th Congress.

The reversal doesn’t mean the effort to change the ethics office is dead. Representative Tom Cole, an Oklahoma Republican, said leadership promised a bipartisan solution by August to resolve some lawmakers’ concerns about the ethics office. "I think people just did not want this story on opening day," he said.

Monday night’s vote on the amendment, proposed by Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, had come amid broader calls from Trump for steps to fight corruption in Washington, including term limits on lawmakers and restrictions on lobbyists.

“Republicans claim they want to ‘drain the swamp,’ but the night before the new Congress gets sworn in, the House GOP has eliminated the only independent ethics oversight of their actions," Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California said in a statement. "Evidently, ethics are the first casualty of the new Republican Congress."

Earlier Tuesday, House Speaker Paul Ryan defended the change in a statement that insisted the ethics office would still “operate independently.”

“The evenly divided House Ethics Committee will now have oversight of the complaints office,” said Ryan of Wisconsin. He said the House panel would exercise that oversight only to "ensure the office is properly following its rules and laws," and said he instructed the House committee not to "interfere with the office’s investigations or prevent it from doing its job."

‘Abuse’ of Process

Kellyanne Conway, a top adviser to the president-elect, said earlier Tuesday she hadn’t discussed the vote with Trump, who used the anti-corruption slogan on the campaign trail yet has been silent so far on the House measure. But she said it could be compatible with his rhetoric.

"One thing they’re trying to curb is the abuse of the process," Conway said on MSNBC, adding that much depends on the new ethics office that will be created. She said that constituents’ concerns could still be addressed.

The vote prompted protests from government watchdog groups, including those who had pushed for creation of the OCE in 2008. Those groups had said at the time that the Ethics Committee wasn’t diligent enough in policing and punishing member wrongdoing on its own.

Project on Government Oversight Executive Director Danielle Brian condemned the change in a statement that said, "Ethics watchdogs like OCE need to be strengthened and expanded -- not taken out back and shot in the middle of the night.”

Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican and frequent Trump critic, said on Fox News Radio he stands "with Trump. I mean, it’s the dumbest frickin’ thing I’ve ever heard." He added, "This is not the message the House needs to send."

Preliminary Reviews

The idea behind the OCE was that an independent office could provide preliminary, independent reviews of ethics accusations against members of Congress and make recommendations about whether further investigation by the Ethics Committee was necessary.

Kee

"OCE is one of the outstanding ethics accomplishments of the House of Representatives, and it has played a critical role in seeing that the congressional ethics process is no longer viewed as merely a means to sweep problems under the rug," said Norman Eisen and Richard Painter, the chairman and vice chairman of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, in a joint statement. "If the 115th Congress begins with rules amendments undermining OCE, it is setting itself up to be dogged by scandals and ethics issues for years and is returning the House to dark days when ethics violations were rampant and far too often tolerated."

But the office has its detractors, including lawmakers and staffers on both sides of the aisle who claimed they have been unfairly treated. And there have been public turf wars with the Ethics Committee itself.

"There’s been numerous examples, and we heard some of them in there today, of members who have falsely been accused by this group who had to spend a fortune to have their good name restored," said Representative Hal Rogers of Kentucky, who said he supported the measure. "I think there has been an abuse."

Some House Republicans, including Representative Dennis Ross of Florida, said there had been some concerns raised during the closed-door meeting Monday night of the optics of placing new limitations on a government watchdog days before Trump takes office. But he said the majority of the Republicans felt it was time to fix problems with the OCE.

Leaders Opposed

Ryan and McCarthy were among those who argued against the amendment, according to a lawmaker in the room who spoke on condition of anonymity. Ryan’s statement didn’t disclose his position during the private debate.

On Tuesday morning, McCarthy confirmed on MSNBC he had opposed the approval of the amendment but said he would vote for the rules package that contained it.

McCarthy told reporters later Tuesday he agreed with Trump’s tweet. Trump made "the same argument I made in conference," McCarthy told reporters.

He said on MSNBC the changes had earlier had bipartisan support to make investigations more fair.

"One thing we firmly believe in America is due process," he added. "People have a right to defend themselves if they’re being accused of something."

In a statement, Goodlatte described his amendment as one that would "build" on the OCE’s strengths, while also improving upon "the due-process rights for individuals under investigation, as well as witnesses called to testify."

"The OCE has a serious and important role in the House, and this amendment does nothing to impede their work," he said.

Other changes would include requiring that any matter potentially involving a violation of criminal law be referred to the Ethics Committee. The OCE also would be barred from considering anonymous complaints, and its jurisdiction would be limited to the last three Congresses.

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