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Pennsylvania Member of Congress Tracking Report (MoCTrack)


Welcome to the Pennsylvania Member of Congress Tracking Report for the week ending March 17, 2019. There was some significant Senate action this week, and it overshadowed the fact that the House got some pretty neat stuff done as well. If you want to read the full report in its old format, visit this link. MoCTrack also has regularly updated at-a-glance vote-trackers for all of our legislators.  Visit here to see a running tally of how our 18 PA House members voted, and here for our two Senators. Each sheet has links that bring you to short explainers for all votes tracked.

VOTES – The Senate had two big policy votes and a trio of confirmations; the House had one big resolution pass as well as a number of small legislative fixes and improvements
  1. Mitch McConnell was forced to bring the resolution to end Trump’s national emergency up for a vote.  Now that it has passed, we need your help with a few of PA’s GOP House members to overcome the coming veto vote.
  2. The Senate took on the topic of the US involvement in Yemen, and all of the other baggage that comes with that – Trump’s foreign policy, war powers, human rights and arms sales.
  3. The Senate confirmed a trio of Trump picks – a Heritage Foundation alum to lead up the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a Bridgegate veteran for the 3rd Circuit, and a anti-choice, anti-LGBTQ, anti-affirmative action former clerk of Justice Clarence Thomas with a library full of awful writings to the DC Circuit court.
  4. The House considered whether to make public the forthcoming Mueller Report, and the results were surprising.
  5. The House passed a slew of other smaller bills, mostly unanimously. They took on issues like the Electronic Message Preservation Act, the Federal Register Modernization Act, updating the duties of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network… the kind of legislating they were elected to do.

TWEETS and MEDIA COVERAGE
We start off the week with the responses of most of our PA MoCs to the horrific mosque shooting in New Zealand. We have the best Tweets of the week from our Senators, as well as the best media and constituent response of the week.  Our senators were all over traditional media this week, with Senator Casey taking on child care costs, disability employment needs, hazing, and tips on taking Pennsylvania for the Democrats running for president. For the first time ever Senator Toomey beat out his senior colleague in the traditional press (from a volume perspective), with his thoughts on his emergency vote, female voters and the GOP’s issues with them, the opioid crisis and the medical device tax.
 
OTHER SECTIONS
This week we have an explainer on the new American Dream and Promise Act – what it covers, and why it is different and better than all of the solutions (that didn’t pass, natch) for Dreamers and folks getting temporary protected status that we saw ever since President Trump cancelled the DACA program in 2017.  And for our Call to Action segment, we follow up on that explainer with some scripts provided by Make the Road PA, for calling upon legislators to support the American Dream and Promise Act of 2019.

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Bucks and Montco, you know you aren’t forgotten – here’s your version of MoCTrack with extra Fitzpatrick coverage.  We have his response to the awful New Zealand mass murder as well as his Twitter and traditional media recaps.

Stay up to date with what your MoCs are doing in your name – MoCTrack brings you the votes and quotes, all in one place for your convenience!


This is consolidated document with all of our Calls to Action related to legislation. These are bills worth calling our legislators to support, one from each week's report.

This is where we will keep our archive of older, previous weeks' MoCTrack Reports from the 116th Congress.