FreedomWorks Foundation Content

Capitol Hill Update, 10 June, 2013

FreedomWorks Capitol Hill Update, 10-14 June, 2016

House & Senate/Schedule: This is week two of a four-week stretch for both chambers.  Congress’ next recess will be for the week of July 4th.

Legislative Highlight of the Week: The big issue in the House this week is the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), H.R. 1960. $552.1 billion for Defense and $85.8 in additional war spending.  These levels don’t take into account the cut from sequestration, which the House is going to try to reallocate to other spending bills. This bill also continues the controversial provisions to allow the indefinite detention of American citizens, and there will almost certainly be an amendment to remove that unconstitutional violation of our legal rights.

House/Financial Services: The House will spend the first part of this week on the “Swap Jurisdiction Certainty Act”, H.R. 1256.  Introduced by Rep. Scott Garrett, this bill patches a loophole that is allowing U.S. companies to avoid bailout restrictions by channeling transactions through foreign subsidiaries.

House/Farm Bill: Next week, the House will be taking up its rendition of the Farm Bill, H.R. 1947. Like the Senate bill, it creates the new shallow-loss crop insurance entitlement, and spends over $900 billion over ten years. There will certainly be a number of good amendments to improve the bill somewhat, and we will make sure to highlight the best ones as we learn about them.

Senate/Farm Bill: The Senate Farm bill, S. 954, passed Monday night by a vote of 66-27. Sadly, Majority Leader Harry Reid once again decided to shut out most Senators by not allowing an open amendment process, continuing his dictatorial control of the Senate floor.

Senate/Immigration: Although FreedomWorks does not engage on immigration policy, it is worth noting that the Senate has budgeted the entirety of the rest of this work period (until June 28th) to work on their immigration reform bill.

House/Health Care: Congressman Matt Salmon (AZ-5) has introduced the Federal Repeal of Expensive Exchanges (FREE) Act (H.R. 1908), which would repeal the insurance premium subsidies from ObamaCare, as well as the mandates that are intended to force individuals to purchase health insurance. These are the most expensive aspects of ObamaCare, at over $950 over ten years, and repealing them would effectively put the brakes on the ObamaCare trainwreck. FreedomWorks strongly supports this bill, and our letter in support can be found HERE.