Do it for the kids


I heard you.

Recently, I asked you to tell me your top priority for the session. Thousands of Washingtonians told me, “Fund the schools.”

I listened, and last night, I announced my top priority for the next legislative session — and a real plan for action.

The $2.2 billion proposal I outlined last night lays out plans to improve education at all levels, including a $1.3 billion investment in basic education — the largest our state has seen in two decades — that would reduce class sizes in early grades, implement full-day kindergarten, and cover special education and school costs. And the $130 million investment in early education I’ve proposed would be our largest ever.

But with a plan this ambitious, you can bet there will be naysayers — opponents who will claim that it costs too much, that it can’t be done, or that it’s just not a priority for Washington voters.

I need you to help me prove them wrong, and show we have the momentum to pass this plan.

Do you believe Washington students deserve real action on education in the upcoming legislative session? Click here to learn more about my plan and show your support.

Our state is long overdue for a plan that takes education seriously.

Almost three years ago, the Washington Supreme Court unanimously declared that our state had failed to fulfill its constitutional duty to amply provide for education — and that it needed to take immediate action.

Since taking office, I’ve already delivered $1 billion in additional funds to fill in the gap, fighting tooth and nail for every dime. But some leaders still want to kick the can down the road, even after the court held the legislature in contempt earlier this year.

But today’s students shouldn’t be robbed of a high-quality education with only vague promises for action in the future. They deserve immediate action.

If we succeed in passing my plan, we’ll invest in the full continuum of education from early learning to higher education, with greater access and affordability, higher graduation rates, and increased investments in quality educators and administrators.

And with a $26.4 million investment in math and science education in colleges and universities and job training and education for adults without a diploma, we’ll create new jobs by showing employers that building their factories, laboratories, and offices in Washington will give them access to some of the best educated workers in the country.

But to make that happen, I need your help to show that Washington demands action now — not years down the road.

Help me pass a plan that puts Washington students first and prepares them for the jobs of the future. Click here to read more about my plan to improve education, and declare your support.

A comprehensive plan on this scale has been a long time coming, and our kids have waited long enough. Thanks for helping build the support I need to take action now.

Very truly yours,

Jay Inslee

the Senate ~~~ CONGRESS 12/17 ~~~ the House


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The Senate stands adjourned sine die under the provisions of H.Con.Res.125 until 12:00 noon on Tuesday, January 6, 2015.

Following the prayer and pledge and following the presentation of the certificates of election and the swearing-in of elected Members, there will be a required live quorum.

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Last Floor Action:12/16
12:08:01 P.M. – The Speaker announced that pursuant to the order of the House of today, the House stands adjourned until noon on Friday, December 19, 2014, unless it sooner has received a message from the Senate transmitting its adoption of H. Con. Res. 125, in which case the House shall stand adjourned pursuant to that concurrent resolution. Agreed to without objection.

Ted, … Thanks


By

Dr. Vivek Murthy Confirmed As Surgeon General, With An Assist From Ted Cruz

thanks cruz 1

After 517 days without the nation’s top doctor in place, the Senate confirmed Dr. Vivek Murthy to be surgeon general this afternoon by a vote of 51-43. This is an important victory for Americans, who now have a qualified public health leader and communicator-in-chief. It represents a defeat for the NRA — Murthy’s confirmation is the first time the NRA has been defeated on a scored vote since August 5, 2010. And it may not have happened without an unexpected gift from Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX).

On Friday, with the controversial government spending bill still not passed, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell thought they had an agreement to adjourn for the weekend and return Monday to vote on the so-called ‘Cromnibus’ bill. Under the deal, which required unanimous consent from all Senators, Republicans would also be able to vote Monday on a “constitutional point of order” to register their displeasure with President Obama’s immigration action. But Cruz and Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) refused to wait until Monday, demanding the symbolic immigration vote then. When Reid refused, they in turn refused to give their consent to adjourn, leaving the Senate in session over the weekend. This tactic, however, had an unintended consequence for the hard-line conservatives: it allowed Senate Democrats to speed up confirmation for a number of key Obama nominations whose fate was still in question, including Dr. Murthy. Now, the only thing Cruz and friends have to show for their supposed hardball is the confirmation of a surgeon general they opposed on false grounds.

Here at CAP Action, we have been hard at work advocating for the confirmation of Dr. Murthy. And to be sure, it was a diverse group of progressive advocates who pushed the Senate during this lame duck session into giving the surgeon general nominee a vote. But today, in the holiday spirit of giving, we wanted to make sure Sen. Cruz also got a message of our appreciation. So we sent him a teddy bear.

thanks cruz 1

Give Sen. Cruz your thanks as well by sharing this graphic with your social networks! Share on Twitter or share on Facebook.

Let’s remember, this isn’t the first time Cruz has taken a stance with the unintended consequence of helping those he opposes. Last year, he led the charge to shut down the government over funding the Affordable Care Act. And for three weeks during the botched roll-out of HealthCare.gov, when the nation’s attention could have squarely been on the mistake, it instead was also focused on blaming Cruz and his fellow conservatives for a government shutdown that cost $24 billion.

(Speaking of which: today is the last day to enroll in affordable health coverage on the exchange staring January 1! You could save money by shopping around.)

BOTTOM LINE: America now has the qualified surgeon general it needs. Many strong advocates played an important role in making it happen, but we also owe our gratitude to Ted Cruz for the important role he played as well. So Senator Cruz, our sincere thanks.

Like CAP Action on Facebook and follow us on Twitter!

2015 Spending bill


Six ways Democrats lose out in the 2015 spending bill

The bill guts sweeping laws on banking and campaign finance, slashes environmental and IRS funding, and rolls back trucking safety rules

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., a member of the Senate Banking Committee, right, and Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee, express their outrage to reporters that a huge, $1.1 trillion spending bill approved by the Republican-controlled House yesterday contains changes to the 2010 Dodd-Frank law that regulates complex financial instruments known as derivatives, Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2014, on Capitol Hill in Washington. Democratic support for the omnibus bill funding every corner of government faded Wednesday as liberal lawmakers erupted over a provision that weakens the regulation of risky financial instruments and another that allows more money to flood into political parties. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
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Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., a member of the Senate Banking Committee, right, and Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee, express their outrage to reporters that a huge, $1.1 trillion spending bill approved by the Republican-controlled House yesterday contains changes to the 2010 Dodd-Frank law that regulates complex financial instruments known as derivatives, Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2014, on Capitol Hill in Washington. Democratic support for the omnibus bill funding every corner of government faded Wednesday as liberal lawmakers erupted over a provision that weakens the regulation of risky financial instruments and another that allows more money to flood into political parties. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Late Tuesday night, congressional negotiators unveiled a spending deal to keep most of the government funded through September 2015, but on Wednesday it became clear that the substantial policy concessions made by Democrats in a bid to attract enough Republican votes to keep the government open are likely to shrink the coalition supporting the last-minute bill.

 

The 1,600-page spending document could be forced through the House and Senate in less than one week, giving lawmakers little time to review its contents but enough time to be angered that certain controversial provisions were included, most notably major changes to two of the biggest laws approved by Congress since 2000, which had rewritten Wall Street rules and reformed the campaign finance system.

The current government spending bill expires on Thursday, and failure to pass new legislation by then will trigger another shutdown a little more than a year after Republicans forced a 16-day government closure in October 2013. That GOP standoff over defunding the Democrats’ health care law cost the nation an estimated $24 billion.

Though the so-called cromnibus bill funds the majority of the government through an omnibus package for the rest of the fiscal year, it pays for the Department of Homeland Security only through February via a stopgap measure known as a continuing resolution, or CR. Conservatives hope to isolate the department, which is tasked with implementing President Barack Obama’s recent executive order exempting millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation, and the bill will give Republicans a chance to freshly debate its funding in the new year, when they will control both the House and Senate.

Yahoo News’ list of the most interesting and significant policy changes in the year-end spending bill:

Eliminating a key Wall Street reform. The Democratic-controlled Congress in 2010 approved sweeping changes to the nation’s financial systems, many of them tailored to prevent the kind of crisis that tanked the economy in 2008. One of the centerpieces of the bill was a measure designed to spin off banks’ riskiest activities into subsidiaries, isolating the main functions of banks from those risks and also ensuring that taxpayers would not be on the hook to pay for losses created by those risky trades in the event that they failed. The spending bill approved by Congress eliminates the so-called push-out provision from the Dodd-Frank law, meaning that the trading of derivatives — the risky swaps or bets made against the rise and fall of value in assets — can now once again happen in-house in Wall Street’s largest banks.

Democrats led by Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren are outraged by this return to old ways, and she has said she will oppose the whole bill if the provision remains in it.

Dismantling what was left of campaign finance reform. The Supreme Court since 2010 has repeatedly struck down political donation restrictions approved by Congress in the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. With the spending bill approved by Congress this week, lawmakers at the last minute agreed to undo the most significant remaining changes from the law: the limits for individuals on how much they can give to political parties. Before the change, which was inserted in the last few pages of the mammoth spending bill, the most any one person could give to a party group like the Democratic National Committee or Republican National Committee was $32,400 per year. Now any individual will be able to give anywhere from $97,200 to $777,600, depending on the interpretation of the language included in the government-spending bill.

Meddling in D.C. politics. Because the District of Columbia is not a state, it relies on Congress annually to appropriate its budget. And so Washington, D.C., perennially bears the brunt of congressional compromises as Republicans target D.C. programs to highlight social issues they oppose and Democrats acquiesce in the knowledge that the District will vote overwhelmingly for Democrats no matter what Congress does. During the first shutdown threat of Obama’s tenure in 2011, the GOP pushed through a ban on funds for abortion services in D.C. and started a school voucher program.

This year, Democrats agreed to support Republican language targeting a D.C. ballot initiative legalizing recreational marijuana, which voters approved by nearly 70 percent in November. The wide-ranging appropriations bill bars funds from being used for the implementation, regulation and taxation of marijuana and also, adding insult to injury, mandates that no money provided by Congress can be used by D.C. officials to petition for representation in Congress. Instead of a regular congressperson, D.C. has a delegate, Democrat Eleanor Holmes Norton, who does not have voting privileges in the House.

Cutting IRS and EPA funding. Republicans are touting cuts to the budgets of the Internal Revenue Service and the Environmental Protection Agency. The spending deal reduces IRS spending by $345 million in an olive branch to conservatives still miffed over a scandal involving the agency and its targeting of political groups that were using nonprofit loopholes to avoid paying certain taxes. The IRS funding levels in 2015 will now be lower than they were in the 2008 fiscal year.

Republicans have cut the EPA’s budget for the fifth consecutive year. In a press release the day after the deal was announced, Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, touted cuts to the EPA as one of the “Ten Things You Should Know About the Omnibus Appropriations Bill” and the fact that the bill reduces EPA staffing “to the lowest level since 1989.”

Setting up a messy immigration funding fight. A key feature of the deal for Republicans is that it funds most of the government while specifically preventing Congress from filling the Homeland Security department’s coffers. That particular bargain will allow the House and Senate GOP majority in 2015 to fight over how to appropriate overall Homeland Security programs while withholding funds for the implementation of the president’s immigration executive order. As Yahoo News previously reported, it will be difficult for the GOP to defund implementation of the order because the DHS agency that oversees immigration status changes is self-funded through fees it levies on immigration applications. And yet by agreeing to this particular deal, Democrats are setting themselves up for a messy fight with Republicans about the immigration issue at a time when they will have much less leverage to get their way.

Rolling back truck safety regulations. A policy rider added to the bill to sweeten the deal for Republicans will roll back truck safety regulations issued by the Department of Transportation in 2011 to prevent traffic accidents resulting from trucker fatigue. The two basic requirements were that drivers take a 30-minute rest break within the first eight hours of their shifts and take a “restart” period of 34 hours of rest weekly. According to the Department of Transportation, the “net effect of these changes was to reduce the average maximum week a driver could work from 82 hours to 70 hours.” Trucking companies have been lobbying against these changes and now appear to have secured a victory by getting their repeal included in the spending bill.

My family needs support


President of the United States: Let us keep our American dream

caroline catois
United States