By: Maureen Dowd
On Wed Oct 18 I was present for the Democratic Caucus meeting that discussed their opinions on the bills that will be presented this Friday. There were three main bills on the agenda: Feed the Children and Schools Act, Making the American Borders Safe Again, and Help your Veterans Act.
Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries(Xander Kane) started off by asking the ranking member from each committee to give a recap on how their committee meeting went.
In the Judiciary Committee, the congress members were able to pass the Help Your Veterans Act which the democrats were pleased with referring to it as a “cohesive and narrow bill” with the support of the Republicans. The Second Bill that was discussed was the Privacy and Neutrality Act, which was essentially an Act that would get rid of Educators disclosing their sexual orientation in the classroom. Since the bill was so controversial, vague and took up much debate time the bill was not passed. Ultimately the Stand Your Ground Act was not able to be discussed and was tabled for a later session.
In the Foreign and Military Affairs Committee, Rep Khanna mentioned that the Ukraine Security and Empowerment Act was discussed a lot and had many errors to be questioned. The bill was tabled until next week. Rep Khanna states,” Everyone did feel like they were involved but also do limit phone use during the committee and make sure that everyone is present in the moment and to start calling people out”(Luke Antaky)A clear dig to the Democrat sitting next to him. Ultimately we were unable to spend much time on our second bill and Rep Khanna feels like time could have been better spent.
In the Budget and Domestic Affairs Committee, Rep Katie Porter(Antoinette Damico) spoke about the Feed the Children and Schools Act, Katie Porter’s bill. Rep. Porter’s bill was passed however her budget went from 7 to 5 billion, something that she seemed a little annoyed by. Rep. Porter offhandedly mentioned the Scalise Bill, but simply said"BS bill".
In the Rules Committee, Feed the Children and Schools Act was given 20 minutes debate time and the number of amendments is six. With one of the amendments needing to be made on section 5 and 6. The Rules Committee was not able to allocate Amendment Debate Time which will now be led up to the Speaker. The next bill that will be on the Floor will be the Help the Veterans Act which is given 10 minutes to debate time with no amendments allowed. The last bill is Speaker Scalise’s bill Making the American Borders Safe Again which was replaced from HR 002 to HR 003. This was passed with no amendments with 2 minutes of total debate time. The democratic speaker for this bill will be Rep. Omar. This bill seems to be the Democrat’s main target and concern. They hope to use morning business to speak against this bill.
Today’s floor session will definitely be something to look forward to. With two bipartisan bills and one very controversial one. Who knows what will happen?
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