Pennsylvania Member of Congress Tracking Report (MoCTrack)
Welcome to the Pennsylvania Member of Congress Tracking Report for the week ending February 16, 2020. Both houses were busy with a fully loaded docket before their scheduled home work week. You can find the full version of this week’s report here, and don’t forget to check out our at-a-glance vote trackers for both the House and the Senate.
VOTES – both houses were in session.
- The Senate passed a resolution to block President Trump from additional first strike attack actions towards Iran without an authorization for use of military force in Congress.
- The House removed the deadline to allow ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment.
- Over 1.3 million acres in California, Washington and Colorado were protected as wilderness areas.
- The Senate confirmed five new judges. A trio were confirmed with supermajorities, but two were party line votes. One judge has less than a year’s experience on the district court before being confirmed to the Appeals courts, and the other got very low marks from his state bar. But they are both very young so… <sigh>
- There were a handful of unanimously passed bills that prove bipartisanship is still possible.
We have Twitter Action sections with our MoCs’ feedback on the release of the Trump Budget, the 2nd anniversary of the Parkland school shooting, promoted legislation, and the tweets of the week – which features both the best and the worst from PA’s lawmakers. We have quotes from Senator Casey in the traditional media, on topics like home health care workers, the Trump budget, the political interference in the judiciary and a new policy package he introduced. Senator Toomey’s traditional media presence this week include a new tax cut he has proposed, sanctuary cities, tariff relief and his take on the Trump budget.
OTHER SECTIONS
Both of our senators issued statements after the Iran resolution vote, and we have them in one place for you. Our bog project for the week is a detailed recap of Senator Casey’s Five Freedoms for America’s Children policy proposal. Senator Casey’s original document is LONG…. So we cut it down a bit for easier consumption, but still give you the background for this plan, and the research and policy suggestions that go into ensuring each of the five freedoms. And we close with what you can do to support this initiative if you support it (we think you will – it’s great).
PA-01
We have your Brian Fitzpatrick content in our special PA-01 report. Things have picked up a little bit from the Fitzpatrick camp after weeks of near-silence. We have the PA-01 tweets as well as a rundown of the Fitzpatrick traditional media presence. And this week he did a radio interview, and a helpful volunteer provided transcripts of several of his responses. They are worth a read!
With Congress taking a home work week for President’s Day, MoCTrack will be off next week. Our next report will be on March 1st. Our MoCs do a lot on behalf of the districts they represent. Make sure you keep up to date with all that they are up to. Read MoCTrack!
