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HOUSE

lost old file, see text file

see HOUSE 2

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TOOLS:

http://www.opencongress.org/people/bills/412567_Jim_Bridenstine  gives voted with and ~ most

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david roberts grist 3/15

Last year, the House of Representatives passed two absurd anti-science bills, theSecret Science Reform Act and the EPA Science Advisory Board Reform Act. It will come as no surprise that both bills, under the guise of “reform,” would have the practical effect of crippling the EPA’s efforts to assess science in a fair and timely way. I don’t have the heart to get into it — follow the links above for the details.

The bills are back; the House considered them both again yesterday. Emily Atkin has the gory details if you’re interested. They might get a little further this time — the Democratic Senate didn’t take them up last year, obviously, but the GOP-controlled Senate might this year — though it won’t matter in the end, as Obama has threatened to veto both. So it’s mainly yet another act of reactionary symbolism from the right.

All that is by way of background so I can draw your attention to a hilarious amendment attached to the Science Advisory Board bill. It comes by way of the bill’s sponsor, Rep. David McKinley (R-W.Va.), a far-right, coal-country, climate-denying conservative of the old school.

Here’s the amendment. Its sole purpose is to prohibit the EPA’s Science Advisory Board from taking into consideration, for any purpose, the following reports:

So. When considering what to do about carbon pollution, EPA may not consider what America’s best scientists have concluded about it, what an international panel of scientists has concluded about it, how the federal government has officially recommended calculating its value, or the most comprehensive solutions for it. Oh, and it can’t consider Agenda 21 either. Otherwise the EPA can go nuts.

As I’ve said many, many times, most Americans have no idea how batshit crazy the House GOP has gone. They serve the base, and only the base (and Politicoobsessives) pay close attention. But imagine, if you will, a GOP House and Senate paired with President Jeb Bush. A bill like this might pass. Politicians might be picking and choosing, based on ideological criteria, which scientific reports administrative agencies are allowed to consider. It’s amusing in its own dark way, but it’s not a sitcom or a satire. It’s real life.

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ew Republicans have kind words for the Environmental Protection Agency. Many refer to it as a menacing, conspiratorial madhouse—rather than an agency that takes up 0.2 percent of the federal government’s budget to keep the air and water clean. Michele Bachmann once pledged to padlock its doors; John Boehner has called it “nuts”; and Mitch McConnell says getting “the EPA reined in” will be a top priority when he ascends to Senate majority leader come January.

Those who insist the EPA needs muzzling claim it is consistently “overreaching” and making laws at “unprecedented” rates. (The agency is “a regulatory firehose on U.S. business,” intoned the Wall Street Journal.) But such bellows are at odds with the reality. According to the Office of Management and Budget, from 2001 to 2011, EPA regulations accounted for annual benefits to the country worth between $141 billion and $691 billion, while incurring annual costs between $42.4 billion and $66.3 billion. As of 2010, fewer Clean Air Act rules had been proposed or issued under the Obama administration than during the same point in the presidencies of George W. Bush or Bill Clinton.

But the agency is plagued by real problems—bureaucracies tasked with complicated rulemaking and enforcement cannot avoid them. Too many poor or outdated assessment models increase costs, a Government Accountability Office report found this summer. Decisions are often delayed, causing confusion and frustration about otherwise useful regulations. It ought to be possible to make the EPA more efficient, transparent, modern, and effective. Yet two bills that passed the House of Representatives last week show how good ideas about improving the EPA can turn radioactive in Republicans’ hands.

One of the bill’s sponsors decries evolution as a lie “from the pit of hell.”

Last Wednesday, the chamber approved the Secret Science Reform Act of 2014, which prohibits the EPA from “proposing, finalizing, or disseminating regulations or assessments based on science that is not transparent or reproducible.” It compels the agency to release all scientific and technical information used in its assessments.

On its face, this does not sound bad. Early in his presidency, Barack Obama promised to make agency science transparent. Many on the left and right have pointed out that the administration’s Open Government Initiative has fallen far short of that goal.Scientists and bureaucrats themselves want to work toward more clarity and openness.

Alas, the “Secret Science” bill was put forth by Republicans on the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee with a penchant for alienating those who could lead reforms and improvements. Georgia’s Rep. Paul Broun (one of the bill’s sponsors) calls climate change a “hoax” and decries evolution as a lie “from the pit of hell.” That doesn’t inspire faith in science legislation with his backing. EPA mandarins—mere mortals just trying to do what’s asked of them—are attacked as job killers, and are bound to think any Republican bill is passed with their destruction in mind. “The EPA has approved regulations that have placed a crippling financial burden on economic growth in this country,” reads the press release from the bill’s author, Rep. David Schweikert, R-Ariz. And as Christopher Flavelle of *Bloomberg*points out, rather than making the EPA leaner, the bill would increase the agency’s costs tremendously without any real gains. What’s more, the Congressional Budget Office says implementing the law would mean far fewer scientific studies (about half of the current number) would go into making the EPA’s decisions.

Denouncing the EPA plays to conservative constituents during election season—the majority of voters in eight battleground Senate states in this year’s midterms said they opposed new EPA carbon emission limit rules, according to a poll from Magellan Strategies, a research firm. So right-wing politicians are keen to bash it as a costly and growing juggernaut they promise to tame. Two other House bills, also passed last week, would bar scientists from advising the EPA on their own researchand speed up issuing air pollution permits for new factories. Supporters of the bills swear they are necessary for creating more transparency and ensuring that fewer onerous regulations will be imposed on businesses

But the pace of EPA regulations has “slowed considerably since 2011,” according to a report this summer from the Congressional Research Service, Congress’s public policy research arm. Public comment periods on new rules have frequently been extended, with revisions that “often relied on data submitted by industry” stakeholders. Many finalized rules on big issues were more lax than originally proposed as a result, CRS found. That makes Republican bills that effectively allow even more industry input in the name of curtailing runaway EPA authority look even more disingenuous. Worse, they breed distrust—the White House has already warned that it would veto all three bills should they pass the Senate—which makes it harder to pass legislation that might actually be meaningful.

Scientific integrity is something everyone should fight for, and government agencies like the EPA are not bad places to push for more clarity and collaboration. But politics has poisoned that figurative well. Sadly, this risks poisoning literal ones Americans might drink from.

Boer Deng writes for Nature. Follow her on Twitter.

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TAH says of 278 only 20 gop admit agw?

In the latest shameful chapter of their war on workers, House Republicans passed the Orwellian-named “Working Families Flexibility Act,” which gives business owners the flexibility of not paying hourly workers a higher wage for overtime work.

(maybe related, wind energy credits nixed

lcv 2013

House 

COMMITTEE CHAIR SCORE RANKING MEMBER SCORE

Agriculture Lucas (OK-03) 11 Peterson (MN-07) 14

Appropriations Rogers, Harold (KY-05) 4 Lowey (NY-17) 96

Energy and Commerce Upton (MI-06) 4 Waxman (CA-30) 93

Natural Resources Hastings (WA-04) 4 DeFazio (OR-04)* 93  also Markey (MA-07)* 71

Science, Space, and Technology Smith, Lamar (TX-21) 7 Johnson, Eddie Bernice (TX-30) 93

Transportation and Infrastructure Shuster (PA-09) 11 Rahall (WV-03) 46

HOUSE COMMITTEE LEADER AVERAGE CHAIRS 7 RANKING MEMBERS 72

2012:

House Scores below 5:

Alabama Bachus, S. California Calvert · Gallegly · Hunter ·

McKeon Florida Mack Georgia Scott, A. Illinois Schock Indiana

Young, T. Louisiana Alexander, R. · Boustany Minnesota Kline,

J. Mississippi Nunnelee Missouri Graves, S. · Hartzler Nevada

Amodei New York Buerkle · Reed, T. · Turner, B. North Carolina

Myrick Tennessee DesJarlais · Roe Texas Johnson, S. · Olson

Hastings, D. Wisconsin Duffy · Petri

The League of Conservation Voters released their annual National Environmental Scorecard Wednesday, ranking members of congress on their environmental voting record in the past year.

The report tallies 35 "key votes" on environmental issues in the House and 14 in the Senate, and averages the voting record of each member of Congress. Eighty-five members of the House, along with 37 Senators, had a 90 percent or higher pro-environmental record in 2012. Yet 17 senators and 175 of the lower chamber's 435 members received a score of less than 10 percent, according to LCV.

Votes tracked in the report related to topics such as offshore drilling, oil subsidies, public lands protections, ocean policy and other natural resource and environmental issues.

Gene Karpinski, President of the League of Conservation Voters, said in an emailed statement, “The best that can be said about this session of the 112th Congress is that it’s over." He added, "In the face of Hurricane Sandy and the hottest year on record in the U.S., the House of Representatives managed to cement its status as the most anti-environmental House ever."

"The good news is that while the U.S. House voted against the environment with alarming frequency, both the U.S. Senate and the Obama administration stood firm against the vast majority of these attacks," the group wrote in the report.

The report's findings echo the observations of Harvard University's Theda Skocpol, "who noted asharp shift away from environmental causes by Republican members of Congress over the last five or six years," according to The Guardian.

The League of Conservation Voters' National Environmental Scorecard has been "the nationally accepted yardstick used to rate members of Congress on environmental, public health, and energy issues" since 1971, according to the organization.

A recent report to Congress from the Government Accountability Office affirmed the "very clear" science behind climate change and warned that the federal government is "terribly exposed" fiscally to the impacts of climate change, reported The Huffington Post's Michael McAuliff.

huffpo

Clearly, we need stronger rules and policies to safeguard our water. Yet two obstacles bar the path to tougher protections. First, our nation's clean water laws are now hampered by significant loopholes and exemptions. The very reach of the Clean Water Act has been undermined by a set of court decisions. As a result, nearly 60 percent of our streams -- including those feeding drinking water sources for 117 million Americans -- may no longer be protected. This loophole has hobbled literally hundreds of enforcement cases against known polluters. Similarly, despite its wide-ranging damage,**fracking is exempt**from key provisions of several laws designed to protect our water and our health -- including the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), the Safe Drinking Water Act, and the Clean Air Act.

Second, big polluters--from oil and gas to mega-agribusiness -- are working to further undermine the laws and regulations that protect our waterways. For example, in the 112th Congress, the House of Representatives voted**no fewer than 38 times**to dismantle the Clean Water Act, including passing a package of clean water act attacks as the last vote before they adjourned for elections.

Thus, at the 40-year mark, clean water stands at a crossroads. To truly protect our rivers, streams, and drinking water, we will need to overcome these two obstacles -- to reverse the loopholes in our laws and to confront and turn back the heavy guns of polluting interests in Washington. And as with the passage of the Clean Water Act itself, it will take nothing less than the sustained effort of citizens raising their voices to do so.

GOP pushes bill to quash EPA’s international climate efforts

By Philip Bump

Today in Washington, politics happened. From The Hill:

An Environmental Protection Agency official said during a Tuesday hearing that a House Republican-sponsored bill would “cripple” the agency’s ability to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

This concern failed to change the Republicans’ minds.

The building where the same old thing happened yet again today.

The House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on Energy and Power hearing discussed a bill (H.R. 4255) that would eliminate EPA’s ability to offer financial assistance for international greenhouse gas reduction activities.

Subcommittee Chairman Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.), the bill’s sponsor, called it a “non-controversial bill.” He packaged the bill as a way to cut the federal deficit, though EPA has spent just $140 million on such foreign grants since 2001 — most of which were authorized under former President George W. Bush.

Republicans said deficit cutting has to start somewhere, acknowledging that the total tab for EPA’s foreign grants program is minor.

Surprisingly, Whitfield voted against cutting subsidies for oil companies.

This big ol’ world just keeps on turnin’

Source

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zombies: http://thinkprogress.org/climate-zombie-caucus/

kochs pumped lots of $ into 2010 house race:

nyer mayer:

In 1997, another Senate investigation began looking into what a minority report called “an audacious plan to pour millions of dollars in contributions into Republican campaigns nationwide without disclosing the amount or source,” in order to evade campaign-finance laws. A shell corporation, Triad Management, had paid more than three million dollars for attack ads in twenty-six House races and three Senate races. More than half of the advertising money came from an obscure nonprofit group, the Economic Education Trust. The Senate committee’s minority report suggested that “the trust was financed in whole or in part by Charles and David Koch of Wichita, Kansas.” The brothers were suspected of having secretly paid for the attack ads, most of which aired in states where Koch Industries did business. In Kansas, where Triad Management was especially active, the funds may have played a decisive role in four of six federal races. The Kochs, when asked by reporters if they had given the money, refused to comment. In 1998, however, the Wall Street Journal confirmed that a consultant on the Kochs’ payroll had been involved in the scheme. Charles Lewis, of the Center for Public Integrity, described the scandal as “historic. Triad was the first time a major corporation used a cutout”—a front operation—“in a threatening way. Koch Industries was the poster child of a company run amok.”

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effect of climategate: mojo

But none of the exonerations mattered: The scientists had lost control of the narrative. The percentage of people who believe that the world is warming has fallen 14 points from its 2008 high, according to polling [32] (PDF). Gallup's annual poll [115] in 2010 found that 48 percent of Americans said they believe that fears of global warming "are generally exaggerated"—the highest figure since pollsters began asking that question in 1997.

Most significant, however, has been the long-term hardening of the political divide on the issue. In 1997, the percentage of Republicans and Democrats who believed in climate change was nearly the same—47 percent and 46 percent, respectively. By March 2010, 66 percent of Democrats and only 31 percent of Republicans agreed that global warming was already occurring. Half of the new House GOP members [116] flatly deny that the planet is warming, and only four say [117] they accept the science of climate change.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the new head of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform [118] (PDF), last fall outlined plans to hold hearings on the "Politicization of Science," focused largely on Climategate. Rep. Ralph Hall [119] (R-Texas), the new chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, has already said that he plans to look into "the global warming or global freezing." The vice chairman of the same committee, Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), has accused climate scientists of a "massive international scientific fraud [120] (PDF)." Virginia's attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli, has subpoenaed [121] (PDF) records from Mann's time at the University of Virginia in an attempt to prove that he committed "fraud." Congressional Republicans are also using Climategate as fodder [122] in their fight to bar the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gas emissions....http://www.motherjones.com/print/106101

The Most Anti-Environment Congress in History: Here's the Record

Posted: 06/21/2012 1:41 pm

Global temperatures are rising, violent weather is increasing; chemicals in the air, food supply and water might be leading to soaring rates of allergies, asthma, certain cancers, hormone disruption, male infertility. Forest lands are vanishing at unprecedented rates, vast dead zones are spreading in the world's oceans, we are running out of non-renewable fossil fuels.

Everyone knows that we are facing an unprecedented environmental crisis -- right?

Wrong. This news seems never to have gotten through to America's Republican legislators. In the face of these huge and escalating threats, the GOP majority over the last year has voted no fewer than 247 times (nearly once a day for every day the House was in session) to weaken environmental protections that have been in place for decades and to defeat needed legislation.

This according to a report released on Monday by Representatives Henry Waxman, a member the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and Edward Markey a member of the Committee on Natural Resources. They have called the 112th Congress the most anti-environment ever. Here is how Waxman and Markeybreak down this dismal record.

And House Republicans have not been content merely to shoot down vital new environmental legislation. They have pushed through laws that tie the hands of government agencies making "the issuance of new regulations more difficult, if not impossible." Three bills were passed with unanimous Republican support that require federal regulatory agencies to:

"Use time-consuming quasi-judicial procedures to issue major rules, add more than 60 new requirements to agency rulemaking, prevent new rules from going into effect unless approved by both the House and Senate, and subject the rules to new judicial challenges, such as lawsuits contesting the agency's cost-benefit analysis."

Why are these conservative politicians so anxious to gut environmental laws and cripple US regulators? That's easy--just follow the money. The folks who gained the most from these votes,**according to Markey and Waxman**, were, you guessed it, the oil and gas industry. They report that in little over a year the House has voted 109 times for policies that would advance the interests of the oil and gas industry at the expense of the environment, public health, and the taxpayer.

So nobody will be surprised to learn that Republicans were far and away the largest recipients of oil and gas industry largesse in recent elections. House Republicans received more than four times the campaign contributions as Democrats ($38 million as opposed to $9 million) from these corporations, according to**data published by the Center for Responsive Politics**. The**coal industry**too contributed over 8 million dollars last year -- their highest level on record -- 85 percent of it going to House Republicans.

What can we expect in the future as cash from Big Energy continues to pour in to corrupt our legislative process?

"These votes are just a preview of coming attractions if the fossil fuel industries get their way and place more Republicans in Congress and the White House," Markey stated in a press release. "With that kind of cast, anti-environmental blockbusters will be the norm, sending more mercury into our kids, more air pollution into our lungs, and more carbon pollution into our atmosphere."

apr 7 2011 all gop voted to oppose epa endangerment finding p 26; waxman amendment said we shd endorse science, all gop opposed but 1.

silly quotes from upton, barton, whitfield ky, shimkus, j sullivan subcomm env and economy , rep m burgess tx, blackburn, scalise, d mckinley w va, m griffith tx, cory gardner co, bill cassisdy la "shift in axis, 

d younk ak,  j duncan, p broun ga

housr appro chair boasted of 27% cut for climate (epa, usgs, nat'l parks, noaa no Climate Service (long term data)

mike pompero ks sponsored  epas ghg reporting pgm (gop 228 to 9)

cravaack minn ~nsa educ

upton energy tax prevention act 2011

r rush d illin tried to get pentagon on side of right, gop ~

if epa and trans dept rules went thru, saved 4b brrl oil stopped 2b metric tons co2

~ int'l: defund envoy, ~ US airlines comply w/ EU rule, defund ipcc! luetkemeyer

berman against helping poor country w/ gw

johncarter ~ homeland sec on gw

green enrgy cuts

p ryan down 83% by 2020 "corp welfare spending" solar down 37%, weater8zation 81% (UP FF 7%)

arpa-e

energy st'd: 2007 light bulb st'd in effect 2012, save housholds 6b$ in 2015 alone! did not ban incand, in fact could get us better ones note 254  barton and burgess

coal ash: d mckinley; all gop ~ warning sys

REINS act HR 10 allows congr to stop old and new regs?

REG FLEX says rules musrt assess effect on small biz, but now indirect effects

ix: enrich FF

14 votes ~ ghg, 11x weakend safety offshore oil p 53, less oversight, increased offshore area, prtevent states form limiting PIONEERS shale oil

~ DoD EISA

preserved tax breaks

concl: avg one ~ envir vote/day; 44% benefitted FF, 94% gop in roll call votes ~ green; 87% demo pro green

77 ~ air, 39 land, 37 agw , 31 water, epa 115, dept int 51, doe 49

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-schiffman/congress-environment_b_1611604.html?view=print&comm_ref=false

full: http://democrats.energycommerce.house.gov/sites/default/files/image_uploads/Report_AntiEnv_06.18.12.pdf

Members Who Supported Massive Giveaway To Big Oil Have Received $38.6 Million From The Industry

By Rebecca Leber on Jun 21, 2012 at 4:46 pm

The House of Representatives, which already holds the title of the most anti-environment House ever, today added another mark to the list — the Domestic Energy Production Act, H.R. 4480. The act is specifically designed to increase oil and gas development, with measures that block safeguards from smog and pollution and mandate drilling on public lands. The House Republicans passed this pollution and plunder energy package overrun by oil and gas industry interests, 248 to 163. This breakdown includes 229 Republicans and 19 Democratic members.

A ThinkProgress analysis of Center for Responsive Politics data shows how that oil and gas money overwhelmingly went to the votes for gutting safeguards from air pollution, drilling regulations and public lands protections:

The oil industry has rarely been more influential in the House, based on lobbying and campaign contributions:

Republicans have said they are for all forms of energy, but the Domestic Energy Production Act passed today shows much different priorities. While the energy package included many provisions to encourage oil and gas, clean energy was included only twice. GOP leaders did not even permit debate over amendments to include support for renewables and other forms of clean energy.

Even as the White House has threatened to veto the package, passing this bill reaffirms the House Republicans’ dedication to “oil above all.”

“In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted,” Mann and Ornstein write in “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks,” their new book on our dyspeptic politics. “Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.”

They describe the G.O.P. as “an insurgent outlier,” and cite studies that Republicans are now more conservative they have been since, well, the era when women could not vote, blacks could not share the same public space as whites and the income tax was a distant dream of a forward-thinking Republican reformer, Theodore Roosevelt.

It’s not just the “appalling spectacle of hostage taking,” as Mann and Ornstein described last year’s budget crises, when Republicans threatened government shutdown and public default in the name of fiscal responsibility. If the House majority were really fiscally responsible they would at least close tax loopholes. But they won’t, because 238 of the 242 House Republicans have taken a pledge to Grover Norquist to never raise revenues, shirking their duty to put country first.

Nor is it the pathos of Republicans who let the most dangerous demagogues among them — highlighted by freshman Representative Allen West, whose latest absurd claim is that up to 81 Democrats in Congress are members of the Communist Party — lie without censure.

But these people with an R on their jerseys are harming the country, acting like “an apocalyptic cult” as a veteran Republican staffer, Mike Lofgren, cited by Mann and Ornstein, described his party last year.

What we got with the 2010 election was a group that creates its own facts. They deny the elemental fiscal math that the United States will never balance its books without raising somebody’s taxes. And they deny elemental science, going so far as to vote as a group that global warming caused by man essentially does not exist.

Perhaps it’s better, then, that the 112th has passed fewer laws than any Congress in at least 40 years. What do they do with their time? Take a look at Eric Cantor’s 2012 House calendar. Half of April, half of May, and nearly every day from August all the way to Election Day, members of Congress are off on something called “constituent work week,” also known as “recess,” or junketeering, fund-raising, vacationing or campaigning....http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/03/do-nothings-and-know-nothings/

dems for XL

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/twenty-two-house-democrats-urge-president-obama-to-ensure-keystone-xl-receives-presidential-permit-2011-10-19?reflink=MW_news_stmp

11 top oil recip

Rep. Jason Altmire, (D - 4th/PA), Transportation and Infrastructure CommitteeRep. Joe Baca, (D - 43rd/CA), Agriculture Committee Rep. John Barrow, (D - 12th/GA), Energy and Commerce Committee Rep. Dan Boren, (D - 2nd/OK), Natural Resources Committee Rep. Leonard Boswell, (D - 3rd/IA), Transportation and Infrastructure CommitteeRep. Robert Brady (D - 1st/PA), Armed Services CommitteeRep. Jim Costa, (D -20th/CA), Natural Resources Committee Rep. Henry Cuellar, (D - 28th/TX), Agriculture Committee & Homeland Security CommitteeRep. Charlie Gonzalez, (D - 20th/ TX), Energy and Commerce CommitteeRep. Al Green, (D - 9th/TX), Financial Services CommitteeRep. Gene Green, (D - 29th/TX), Energy and Commerce Committee Rep. Ruben Hinojosa, (D - 15th/TX), Education and the Workforce CommitteeRep. Tim Holden, (D - 17th/ PA), Transportation and Infrastructure CommitteeRep. Shelia Jackson Lee, (D - 18th/TX), Homeland Security CommitteeRep. Daniel Lipinski, (D - 3rd/ IL), Transportation and Infrastructure CommitteeRep. Tim Matheson, (D - 2nd/UT), Energy and CommerceRep. Bill Owens, (D - 23rd/NY), Agriculture Committee, Armed Services Committee and Small Business CommitteeRep. Collin Peterson, (D - 7th/MN), Agriculture Committee (Ranking Member)Rep. Mike Ross, (D - 4th/AR), Energy and Commerce CommitteeRep. Peter Visclovsky, (D - 1st/IN), Appropriations CommitteeRep. Mark Critz (D - 12th/ PA), Armed ServicesRep. Carolyn McCarthy (D - 4th /NY), Education & the Workforce; Financial Services