 |
|
Christ Church,
|
|
UCC - JPANet Alert: Legislative Action Item Summary From: Sent: Saturday, August 02, 2003 6:57 AM Friends, Here's a summary of Congressional legislative action items from the UCC's Justice and Peace Action Network (JPANet). -- Jeannette
-- COLOMBIA -- -- FAST TRACK TRADE -- -- TAX AND FEDERAL BUDGET -- -- MEDICARE, MEDICAID, AND PRESCRIPTION DRUGS -- -- TEMPORARY ASSISTANCE TO NEEDY FAMILIES (TANF) -- -- FAITH BASED INITIATIVE -- -- HOMELAND SECURITY -- -- ENERGY BILL -- -- PUBLIC EDUCATION -- -- CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM -- -- JUDICIAL NOMINATIONS AND SUPREME COURT WATCH -- -- GLOBAL AIDS FUNDING -- ----- Original Message ----- From: "UCC Action Network" To: Sent: Friday, August 01, 2003 5:36 PM Subject: UCC JPANet 2003 MID-YEAR LEGISLATIVE UPDATE (Reply to with information requests.) Dear JPANet Advocate, The Summer Break in Congress will be upon us when the Senate goes home, which should be in the week of August 3rd. We will be back online with Weekly Messages the last week of August. This legislative update reports on progress we have made on UCCTakeAction issues you have acted on as a member of the JPANetwork. We have had more victories than we expected, thanks in part to the participation of our 7,000 UCC members in the network. This update also lists what is still left to be done by our network as Congress returns to finish its work in September. http://www.ucc.org/justice/brief03.pdf.
Sincerely,
Faith advocates including the UCC Justice and Witness Ministries are working with Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Rep. Jim Leach (R-IA) to build support for the Iraqi Freedom from Debt Act, pressuring the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank to reduce or cancel Iraqi debt. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) has introduced H.R. 2625, calling for an open, bipartisan commission to investigate pre-war intelligence that led to spurious and inaccurate assessments of Iraq's military weapons program.
-- COLOMBIA -- The Foreign Operations bill did not come up before the summer recess, and debate is scheduled to begin in early fall. The military expenditures for Colombia have grown as the U.S. expands its drug interdiction program to include funding for Colombian military forces to guard Occidental Petroleum's pipeline. UCC advocates will ask for increased funding for alternative development, decreased funding for the military and aerial fumigation, and increased aid to assist with those internally displaced by violence.
-- FAST TRACK TRADE -- The UCC Justice and Witness Ministries has joined with a broad international coalition to sponsor peaceful protest actions when trade ministers from across the Americas gather in Miami on November 19-22, 2003, for negotiations on the future of the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas. The negotiations, which so far have excluded all input from civil society organizations, are scheduled to conclude by 2005.
-- TAX AND FEDERAL BUDGET -- Advocacy by the UCC Justice and Witness Ministries and hundreds of other organizations forced the President to scale back his original $726 billion tax cut plan (over ten years) to $318 billion and to abandon his centerpiece proposal on the elimination of taxes on dividends. The final tax cut plan also designated $20 billion to states suffering huge budget crises. The House has voted to permanently repeal the federal estate tax, but it will not come up in the Senate until early fall, if at all. The UCC has joined other faith groups in calling on Congress to restore child tax credit benefits dropped from the final tax bill which affect 12 million children from low-income families.
-- MEDICARE, MEDICAID, AND PRESCRIPTION DRUGS -- The House and Senate have passed prescription drug bills that would deliver the benefit through private insurance companies and managed care organizations. The bill is stuck in Conference Committee, where differences between the House and Senate versions have delayed the plan. It is crucial that the final version of the legislation includes the government-based backup plan in the Senate version and drops the House provision to convert all of Medicare to a premium support plan for private insurance that would begin in 2010. Efforts to convert Medicaid into a block grant have been defeated for the moment but may well re-emerge.
-- TEMPORARY ASSISTANCE TO NEEDY FAMILIES (TANF) -- Deliberation on TANF was delayed while the Senate Finance Committee addressed tax and budget issues and the Medicare prescription drug benefit. A temporary extension of the current TANF program will continue until the Senate takes up TANF in late July or September. The primary goal of the President is to increase the number of work hours required of TANF recipients and to increase the percentage of beneficiaries who have to meet work requirements. There will be efforts in the Senate to improve the TANF program by increasing rather than decreasing what counts as work activity, to help beneficiaries overcome barriers to gaining and keeping employment, and to provide more support for child care.
-- FAITH BASED INITIATIVE -- With a 95 to 5 vote, the Senate passed the Charity Aid, Recovery, and Empowerment (CARE) Act (S. 476) without two of its key provisions - an expansion of "charitable choice" and "equal treatment" language. These provisions would have allowed the government to directly fund the social service programs of houses of worship despite the fact that such entities are permitted by law to discriminate in hiring based on religious adherence. The legislation is now primarily a tax bill employing tax credits and other incentives to increase much- needed charitable giving to secular and sectarian charities. A similar bill is expected to pass the House of Representatives sometime this year.
-- HOMELAND SECURITY -- The primary Homeland Security legislation has passed and now the work to implement this mammoth new program has begun. Amidst concerns about threats to basic civil liberties and privacy raised by a broad spectrum of groups, there have been efforts in the Congress to establish better oversight of homeland security initiatives. Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) has introduced S. 188, a bill to impose a moratorium on data-mining under the Total Information Awareness Program of the Department of Defense and similar initiatives of the Department of Homeland Security. CAPPS II, the Computer-Assisted Passenger Screening System proposed by the Transportation Security Administration to profile certain groups of airline passengers, has been slowed for now with a call for congressional hearings. Houses of Worship Free Speech Act Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) reintroduced legislation in January that would allow houses of worship to use their tax-exempt contributions for political purposes and to endorse candidates. The bill is titled The Houses of Worship Free Speech Restoration Act (H.R. 235). With 154 cosponsors, congressional proponents of the bill will likely bypass the committee process and have it placed on the Suspension Calendar. This will allow the bill to go directly to the House floor for consideration in late July or September.
-- ENERGY BILL -- In March 2003, the UCC Justice and Witness Ministries, together with many others in the religious community, won a victory as the Senate voted 52 to 48 to strip language from the bipartisan budget resolution that would have opened the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling. The Energy bill, which still gives far more emphasis to oil and gas production rather than to conservation, passed the Senate by an 84-14 margin and is now in conference with the House. Advocates will need to watch for separate bills on energy company accountability, clean fuels, and clean air, as it is unlikely that these and many other amendments that failed to make it on this bill will be added in the conference.
-- PUBLIC EDUCATION -- Serious questions are emerging about the "high stakes testing" program in the No Child Left Behind Education Act. Inadequate funding and the intrinsic unfairness of comparing the performance of children who have dramatically different levels of opportunity at the point of their testing, calls for serious rethinking to this approach to public education. Instead of focusing on adequate funding for public education, the Bush Administration has turned its focus to supporting voucher programs that would undercut support for public education.
-- CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM -- In early 2003, the federal district court struck down portions of the Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act of 2002, but upheld the ban on political parties' solicitation of soft money for federal candidates and the use of soft money for attack ads. This sets the stage for a Supreme Court hearing on McConnell v. FEC in late summer, prior to the October term, on whether or not Congress can limit the influence of money in elections. The United Church of Christ has joined as a friend of the court in filing a brief in favor of upholding BCFRA.
-- JUDICIAL NOMINATIONS AND SUPREME COURT WATCH -- The filibuster of Miguel Estrada in the Senate continues, effectively blocking his appointment to the DC Circuit Court. This filibuster, along with filibusters underway of other far right judicial nominees (Priscilla Owen, Willam H. Pryor Jr. and possibly Carolyn Kuhl) is setting a strategy to hold the Bush Administration accountable to the constitutionally-mandated, shared power with the U.S. Senate over court appointments.
-- GLOBAL AIDS FUNDING -- The UCC Justice and Witness Ministries and coalition partners won a victory in the congressional vote to support President Bush's five- year $15 billion Global AIDS bill. Advocates are now engaged in a campaign with U.S. Treasury Secretary Snow to allocate $3 billion to global AIDS relief , $1.3 billion to the AIDS trust fund, and $1.3 billion to the President's Millennium Challenge Account, which will promote the economic and social development that must go hand-in-hand with AIDS mitigation efforts in developing countries. This legislative update is sent by e-mail for use in church newsletters and bulletins. For additional information about the UCC JPANet log on to: http://www.ucctakeaction.org. You received this message because is a member of mailing list originating from the United Church of Christ Justice and Witness Ministries. |
|
|||||
