Appropriations Comm Hse

a way to get accountabilty?  eg pocan vs betsy d

-=-=

House Committee on Appropriations - Republicans LISTS NO DEMS 11 26

WAS TOM COLE

==

https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/watch-betsy-devos-cornered-by-congressman-for-lacking-basic-information-about-the-us-education-system-you-dont-know-the-answer/

no lnx

Betsy DeVos cornered by congressman for lacking basic information about the US education system: ‘You don’t know the answer?’

Written by David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement February 27, 2020

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos testified before a House Appropriations subcommittee Thursday and was repeatedly unable to answer basic questions, got snippy with Democratic lawmakers, and falsely claimed research cited by top Democrats was wrong and had been “debunked.”

(The numbers behind that research came from DeVos herself, according to this piece in the Washington Post.)

In an exchange with Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI), DeVos got heated, refuted his claims, and yet was unable to give a correct answer.

“Everything you’re citing is debunked, ridiculous, so I don’t accept the premise of your question,” DeVos, putting the word “question” in air quotes, told Pocan.

Congressman Pocan was referring to reports that show more than 40 percent of charter schools funded in full or in part by the federal government “collected the grants and then either did not open, or have opened and shut down,” as the report’s author wrote in The Washington Post.

Pocan responded by correctly saying the reports have “actually not” been debunked.

Minutes later Pocan revisited the 40 percent failure rate of charter schools, to DeVos’ anger.

“That is not true, that has been a totally debunked report,” she declared, waving her finger. “It’s nothing but propaganda by an individual who has an in for charter schools.”

“So what percent of charter schools are failing?” Pocan asked.

DeVos’ mouth opened and her jaw dropped but she did not speak for several seconds.

“Do you have an idea?” Pocan pressed.

“I don’t have a state – national,” DeVos, flustered, replied.

“You’re the Secretary of Education and you don’t have this? You ‘know’ this report’s wrong, but you don’t –” Pocan said before being cut off.

“Charter schools are chartered by states, they are not chartered by the federal government,” DeVos said, smiling, as if she won a debate. She had not. She had, however, ignored that the report shows 40.5% of charter schools received some if not all of their funding from the federal government.

“You know that number’s not right but you don’t have a correct number,” Pocan responded.

“What I know is parents and families are choosing to send their children to charter schools,” said DeVos.

“So you don’t know the answer?” Pocan again asked.

“Parents and children are going to charter schools by choice,” DeVos repeated, showing she has little interest in anything but continuing to fund charter schools, regardless of the cost to taxpayers or the cost to students who don’t receive a good education, and the cost to public school students who lose funding every day a student attends a charter school instead of a public school.

That, too, is somewhat false. After three years of an anti-public schools Secretary of Education, parents are learning that charter schools “make up an outsized share of the number of public schools persistently graduating less than half of their students.”

Americans are “turning against” charter schools reveals another Washington Post report.

Watch this exchange between Devos and Pocan:

Aaron Rupar

@atrupar

.@repmarkpocan: 40% of charter schools that you're giving grant to are closing down

BETSY DeVOS: That's a totally debunked report. It's just propaganda

POCAN: So what percent of charters are failing? Do you have an idea?

DeVOS: ¯_(?)_/¯

P: You're the secretary of education!

Embedded video

5/19

The House passed the Interior-EPA spending bill out of committee and it's now barreling toward a floor vote. This could be the biggest environmental vote this year.

But now, we're hearing that Republicans will attempt to jam the bill with awful anti-environment riders.

As it currently stands, the Interior-Environment bill could be the biggest environmental vote of the year. But we HAVE to swing the vote our way and make sure no anti-environment riders make it in.

Our policy team is on Capitol Hill fighting back and LCV members are flooding House offices with calls.We need your help.

If we do nothing now, funding for the EPA's efforts to hold polluters accountable could beslashed.Clean water funding could be decimated. Funding for America's top parks program could be eliminated. Endangered wildlife protections could be gutted. Trump's cronies in the House will pull every maneuver possible to torpedo this bill.

Right now, anti-environment members of the House think they will get away with this. Last year, there were at least 80 amendments to this bill. We cannot sit by quietly and let anti-environment riders into the bill, Padraic.

But you should also know that Trump and GOP leaders are just getting started — we're expecting a massive effort to gut more environmental protections this summer. We need to keep the pressure on Congress to stop these attacks and pass a clean and pro-environment budget bil

---

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/445083-house-panel-votes-to-boost-interior-epa-budget-by-17b

A  key House committee on Wednesday advanced the 2020 budgets for the Interior Department and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), voting to increase their funding by $1.73 billion over last year.

The Democratic-led House Appropriations Committee voted 30-21 along party lines to push forward $37.28 billion in funds for the two agencies. It was an increase of $7.24 billion over President Trump’s 2020 requests, which included deep proposed cuts for both agencies.

“This Interior-Environment funding bill rejects cuts proposed by the Trump administration that would have put the interests of polluters over people,” said Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.), who chairs the subcommittee with jurisdiction over interior and the environment.

Trump originally proposed gutting the EPA’s budget by 31 percent and cutting Interior's by 14 percent. It was the third year in a row that the White House had proposed dramatic cuts to both departments, which appropriators have resoundingly rejected.

The president and some conservative Republican lawmakers have championed cuts to several departments, arguing they are necessary to rein in spending and reduce the national debt, which stands at $22 trillion.

Republicans on the committee complained that Democrats were moving ahead with bills while the House, Senate and White House have not yet agreed to overall spending levels, despite some progress in a Tuesday meeting.

“No doubt there are critical programs in this legislation that need more funding, but that does not give the Federal Government the right to borrow and spend without any over-arching plan for fiscal responsibility,” said Rep. David Joyce (R-Ohio), the interior and environment subcommittee’s ranking member.

Democratic lawmakers have blasted the White House’s budget requests, arguing the billions in proposed cuts would harm the departments’ ability to run efficiently and complete their public health and environmental mandates.

The committee’s appropriations bill instead aims to increase the EPA’s budget by more than $700 million, to $9.5 billion, compared to the bill passed last year by Congress.

Democratic lawmakers also removed nearly all the riders added in past years by Republicans that aimed to block Obama-era environmental regulations. In addition, they added language to the bills that would limit oil and gas drilling on public land.

Lines in the bill could also make it harder for the government to engage in new oil and gas lease sales. A part of the bill would deny fossil fuel leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) if bidding doesn't generate at least $500 million, half of the expected revenue. A GOP amendment to strip out the provisions was voted down.

Another measure Democrats floated in the bill would block any efforts to expand offshore drilling in the Atlantic and elsewhere until Interior makes public a final comprehensive plan. Interior Secretary David Bernhardt recently told Congress the draft plan is on hold for an indeterminate amount of time following ongoing legal challenges to ANWR drilling.

Additional amendments dealing with wild horses and sage grouse were not adopted.

The Interior portion of the bill also flew in the face of Trump’s budget request, which called for eliminating arts programs such as the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The bill increased funding for both by $12.5 million, bringing their budgets to $167.5 million apiece.

It also upped programs such as the Smithsonian Institution, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, for which Trump had requested funding cuts.

The Interior portion of the bill allocated funding for ecological services, land management, the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service, and came out $2.4 billion above Trump’s request.

The bill is the eight of 12 appropriation bills that the committee has sent to the full House, which is expected to take them up in June. Two more bills are scheduled to advance through subcommittee this week.

The Senate has refrained from releasing appropriations bills until an agreement is reached on spending caps.

==

==

http://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/06/28/15000/how-politics-derailed-epa-science-arsenic-endangering-public-health

OMB 300 missing studies arsenic scam epa

==

MIC

Scathing reports have once again spotlighted the massive cost and delays surrounding the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, a jet designed for multiple branches of the military that has been dubbed the single most expensive weapons program in history. Even as criticism has rained down upon them, though, the four main contractors on the project have made sure campaign funds flow to lawmakers who are instrumental in keeping government payments coming for the jet. And all four contractors upped the ante last year with record contributions.

One of the recent reports, from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, is critical of engine failures and software glitches that have caused delays in manufacturing and testing. Notably, an engine fire last summer grounded the entire fleet, some of which were expected to enter active service by the end of this year. The engine is designed by Pratt & Whitney, a subsidiary of United Technologies — a company that also took fire in a separate report from the Department of Defense Inspector General this month, which mentioned more than 60 breaches in the company’s compliance with Pentagon requirements and policies.

F-35 procurement is expected to cost nearly $400 billion, according to the GAO report, and the Pentagon’s budget for it is projected to rise from $8.4 billion in 2015 to $12 billion in 2018.

A 2011 OpenSecrets blog report linked members of a then-new group of F-35 enthusiasts on Capitol Hill — the Joint Strike Fighter Caucus — to the contractors. But a new analysis of 2014 data shows that some of the top recipients from the contractors are powerful legislators: party leaders and chairs or ranking members of influential committees and subcommittees.

Giving from the contractors typically favors Republican candidates by large margins. In the case of Lockheed, for instance, Republican support generally hovers at 60 percent of its total giving (2008 and 2010 were two recent exceptions to the rule, but, as seen in the chart above, Republicans are once again the favored party).All together, United Technologies,Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and BAE Systems donate millions of dollars every couple of years to lawmakers in the Capitol. Following slightly differing time frames, their individual giving has grown enormously since the JSF program started in 1997.  The main contractor, Lockheed, and Northrop Grumman led the pack in 2014, each contributing $4.1 million to campaigns. UT spent $2.1 million, and BAE gave $1.4 million. For all four, 2014 was a record year.

At the top of their recipients list, however, are lawmakers on both sides of the aisle with powerful spots in important committees. The House Armed Services Committee, House Appropriations Committee, and Senate Appropriations Committees were the biggest targets of all of the companies; lawmakers in each received $1.7 million, $1.3 million, and $658,499, respectively.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) is the only lawmaker in the top five of each company. Now the Senate minority party’s No. 2, and ranking member of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, Durbin in 2014 took $62,000 from Northrop Grumman, $54,000 from UT, $29,600 from Lockheed, and $29,299 from BAE.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) showed up in the top five of two of the contractors— $27,400 from Lockheed, $23,500 from BAE — as did Appropriations Committee Chairman Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) — $14,000 from BAE, and $11,500 from UT.

Members of the House appropriations and Armed Services Committees were up there as well — often taking in more than the lawmakers in the Senate.

Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, received $75,900 from Lockheed, and $29,000 from Northrop Grumman. The top Democrat in the Committee, Washington Rep. Adam Smith took in $28,200 from Northrop Grumman. Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.), the ranking member of a subcommittee in Armed Services took in $11,500 from UT. Rep.Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), just a member of the Committee, got $11,500. Hunter is also the son of former House Armed Services Chairman, former Rep. Duncan L. Hunter (R-Calif.).

In Appropriations, several subcommittee chairs make a showing in the companies’ top fives as well. Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas) the chairwoman for the State and Foreign Operations Subcommittee and vice-chair of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee received $73,350 from Lockheed (Granger also lists herself as co-chair of the JSF caucus on her website with a link to the 2011 press release announcing the caucus). The ranking New Jersey lawmaker on the panel, Republican Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, saw $73,350 from Lockheed (Frelinghuysen is also the chairman of the Homeland Security and Defense Committee). Rep. Ander Crenshaw (R-Fla.) took in $35,700 from Northrop Grumman, and $13,600 from BAE.

Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice and Science

---

Subcommittee on Energy and Water

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/House_Committee_on_Appropriations

The Committee on Appropriations is a standing Congressional committee of the United States House of Representatives. It is in charge of setting the specific expenditures of money by the government of the United States. As such, it is one of the most powerful of the committees, and its members are seen as influential.