Senate

As I followed the news over the weekend, I felt some measure of relief when the Senate passed a two-month extension of federal unemployment insurance (UI) and other measures like the payroll tax cut on Saturday. No, two months isn’t long enough – it means we’ll be fighting the same battles early in the new year – and yes, it’s disappointing that millionaires still haven’t been asked to contribute an extra dime. But given the overwhelmingly bipartisan vote in favor of the Senate compromise bill (89 to 10!), I expected that the House would quickly pass it – and the nearly 2 million unemployed workers who would face benefit cutoffs in January without a federal UI extension might get a little peace during the holiday season.

But no. Suddenly critical of the “short-term fix” that he appeared to support just last Friday, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) announced on Sunday that the House would likely reject the Senate bill. And today, House Republican leaders refused even to allow an up-or-down vote on the two-month extension. Instead, the House voted along party lines to refer the bill to a House-Senate conference committee for negotiation, killing the chance to prevent the UI benefits and payroll tax cut from expiring on December 31. Read more »

The Budget Control Act enacted in August required both the House and Senate to vote on a balanced budget amendment (BBA) to the Constitution before the end of this year. As we reported last month, the BBA failed in the House.

Today, two versions of a BBA failed in the Senate: S.J. Res. 10, introduced by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), and S.J. Res. 24, introduced by Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO). S.J. Res. 10 would have required even more extreme spending cuts than the BBA rejected in the House (H.J. Res. 2), as it imposed a strict cap on annual federal expenditures and required a two-thirds vote to raise taxes in any way. S.J. Res. 24 did not include these provisions and would not have applied to Social Security – but either amendment would have resulted in drastic cuts to programs that women and their families depend on, while making recessions longer and deeper. (See our post here for a refresher on the threats posed by any BBA.) Read more »

Caitlin Halligan, a nominee for the D.C. Circuit Court, is one of the most respected appellate lawyers in the country. She has a broad range of legal experience, including government service, private practice, and academia. She has honed her practice in state and federal appellate courts, and has argued five cases before the Supreme Court. Her many accomplishments are reflected by the unanimous "Well-Qualified" rating she received from the ABA Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary. She has earned the respect and support of her peers and has been endorsed by a long list of organizations.

This superb nominee has waited over eight months without a vote by U.S. Senators — even though there are three vacancies on the D.C. Circuit. But the wait is finally over.

It's time for a vote: Tell your Senators to support the nomination of Caitlin Halligan for the D.C. Circuit. Read more »

Yesterday afternoon, the Senate voted to confirm Christopher Droney to a Connecticut-based seat on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Remarkably, Judge Droney is only the 8th appellate court judge confirmed by the Senate in 2011. Those members of the Senate determined to slow-walk judicial nominees are apparently determined to do so in every conceivable category. With 15 vacancies on the courts of appeal, you would think that all Senators would want to proceed to votes on the four other Court of Appeals nominees ready for a vote, out of, you know, a concern for the administration of justice. Apparently not. Read more »

Congressional coverage this week has focused on the continuing debate in the super-committee and the just-passed spending bill that counts tomato paste on pizza as a vegetable in school lunches. It’s hardly a wonder that Congress’s recent approval ratings have been as low as 9 percent; more people approve of turning the U.S. into a communist country than approve of the job Congress is doing.

But there really are Members of Congress who are trying to do the right thing for the country – like helping the nearly 14 million women and men who are unemployed. Last week, I wrote about the Emergency Unemployment Compensation Extension Act, which would maintain vital federal unemployment benefits for workers who have been unemployed for more than six months. And this week, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) introduced the Pathways Back to Work Act (S. 1861), a bill that would create employment and training opportunities for jobless workers, including those who have exhausted UI benefits or who have insufficient work experience or earnings to qualify for UI. (Rep. George Miller has introduced a similar bill, H.R. 3425, in the House.)

The $5 billion Pathways Back to Work Fund established by the bill includes: Read more »

Since HR 358 passed the House of Representatives back in October, we’ve heard from a few of our supporters in the states. These advocates have been alerting us that their legislators just don’t get it. They fail to understand what this dangerous piece of legislation would do and they don’t understand why our advocates are opposed to it (hint: because it is dangerous, you know, and women could die as result of its passage).

The thing we learned from looking at the responses from the offices of Senator Scott Brown (R-MA) and Representative Chris Gibson (R-NY) is that they’re okay being out of touch with their constituents.  In fact, they’re ok not even acknowledging that are taking positions opposed by their constituents. Neither legislator addressed the concerns our advocates raised about this harmful legislation, instead just assuming that the constituents contacting them on this issue were in agreement with their anti-choice stance. Failing to meaningfully respond to the constituents’ concerns is worrisome considering the significant impact HR 358 would have on women and their families. Read more »

Today the Senate HELP Committee held a “roundtable” on the proposed Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) that was voted out of committee two weeks ago. The roundtable came about as a result of some procedural wrangling by Sen. Rand Paul, who continues to call for greater “flexibility” for states. Today’s ESEA takeaway came from Wade Henderson, CEO of the Leadership Conference, who once and for all addressed the argument that states should be the absolute arbiters of education reform. Henderson explained that the Supreme Court studied this “states’ rights” approach to public education and “found it deeply wanting and, in fact, offensive to the Constitution.” In short – for years “flexibility” meant that states bent backwards to avoid educating the kids who need it most – including children of color, poor kids, and students with disabilities. Read more »

Twenty years ago, Anita Hill sat down in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee and detailed how her former supervisor repeatedly made a series of vulgar advances and regularly turned professional conversations into sex-tinged talk of pornography and physical anatomy. As a result, Professor Hill was eviscerated in the Senate and in the press, where people derided her as humorless, a perjurer and (get ready for the real humdinger) as “a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty.” Anyone who actually watched Professor Hill testify was shocked by the disparity between her manner (cool, collected, humble) and the way she was spoken about in the press (vindictive, disingenuous, trampy). Books were published maligning her good name. One book in particular, The Real Anita Hill, received a substantial amount of press. But when the author’s later recanted and apologized for the copious lies contained in the book, there was much less of an uproar. Anita Hill was asked, on the floor of the United States Senate, if she was simply a “spurned woman” out for revenge. She received death threats and her job was threatened. At the time, Clarence Thomas categorically denied every one of the allegations despite the fact that he did not actually listen to Anita Hill’s testimony.

We know now that there were other women who worked for Thomas that were prepared to testify and corroborate Hill’s story – but the chairman of the committee, then Senator Joe Biden, declined to call any of them to the stand. Other colleagues came forward and offered to testify about Thomas' long-standing interest in pornography, but Biden declined to call them as well. Because the Senate Judiciary Committee refused to call most of the most pertinent witnesses, at the time the country was left with an incomplete picture. But over the years, the image has been filled in and today there is consensus that “virtually all the evidence that has emerged since the hearings corroborates Hill’s version of events.”

But fast forward twenty years and there are now political ads out that imply that Professor Hill’s accusations were nothing more than a smear campaign. No wonder Herman Cain’s accuser says she doesn’t want to come forward because she doesn’t want to be another Anita Hill; it is still not safe for women to publicly make an allegation of sexual harassment. Read more »

Today’s jobs data brought surprising news – not only did women gain jobs, they actually gained most of the jobs added to the economy in October. However, our analysis shows that the news isn’t all good – overall unemployment was 9.0 percent and women’s unemployment dropped by just 0.1 percentage points to 8.0 percent, still higher than the 7.7 percent unemployment they had at the beginning of the recovery.  In fact, since the official start of the recovery in June 2009, women have actually lost 117,000 jobs, despite the fact that the economy added more than 1.0 million jobs during that time.

The data show that the job market remains bleak.  The unemployment rate overall hardly dropped, nearly 14 million Americans are officially unemployed, and millions more are underemployed or have given up on finding work. Despite these numbers, just yesterday, the Senate blocked yet another jobs bill, the Rebuild America Jobs Act, which would have created hundreds of thousands of jobs. This bill was just one of three blocked in the last month by the Senate, which also blocked the American Jobs Act and another of its components, the Teachers and First Responders Back to Work Act. Read more »

Yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) tried to get the Senate to consider another component of the American Jobs Act. The Rebuild America Jobs Act would create hundreds of thousands of jobs by investing $50 billion to repair and upgrade our highways, bridges, rail systems and airports, with $50 million dedicated to enhancing access to those job opportunities for women, people of color, and disadvantaged individuals. It would also provide $10 billion for a National Infrastructure Bank to finance additional improvements in water, energy and transportation infrastructure. It would be fully paid for by a surtax of 0.1 percent on income above $1 million.

But – as you’ve probably guessed – it was filibustered, just like the comprehensive American Jobs Act and another of its components, the Teachers and First Responders Back to Work Act.   Read more »