Senate Vote - H.R. 3688: Peru Trade Agreement

H.R. 3688: United States-Peru Trade Promotion Agreement Implementation Act
To implement the United States-Peru Trade Promotion Agreement.

Debate

Amendments (GovTrack, Thomas)

Votes - Previous House Votes - (Passed 285-132)

On Passage of the Bill
Passed 77-18


Senate Poised to Clear Peru Trade Pact Legislation
The Senate was expected to clear legislation Tuesday implementing a free-trade agreement with Peru, as President Bush urged Congress to grant similar approval to a trade pact with Colombia.

After House, Senate Votes 77 to 18 for Peru Trade Bill
The Senate gave decisive backing yesterday to a U.S.-Peru free-trade agreement, opening the way for expanded economic ties with the Andean nation and giving the administration a boost in its quest to shore up relations with Latin America.

House Votes - H.R. 1585: Defense Authorization (Conferee Instructions)

H.R. 1585: National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008
To authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2008 for military activities of the Department of Defense, for military construction, and for defense activities of the Department of Energy, to prescribe military personnel strengths for such fiscal year, and for other purposes.

Debate

Amendments (GovTrack, Thomas)

All Votes - House Passage, Senate Passage

On Closing Portions of the Conference
(consideration: CR H14169-14170)
Passed 405-6

On Motion to Instruct Conferees
(consideration: CR H14163-14169, H14170-14171)
Passed 328-83

House Vote - H.R. 2082: Intelligence Authorization (Conferee Instructions)

H.R. 2082: Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008

Debate, Votes

Congressional Record > Dec 4, 2007

Motion to Go to Conference on H.R. 2082, Intelligence Authorization Act For Fiscal Year 2008: MOTION TO INSTRUCT

Amendments (GovTrack, Thomas)

Previous House Votes

Mr. Hoekstra moved that the House instruct conferees.
(consideration: CR H14126-14128; text: CR H14126)

On Motion to Instruct Conferees
Passed 249-160

National security held hostage to "actual or perceived ... gender, sexual orientation, gender identity"

CQ: Defense Policy Bill Hung Up on Hate Crimes Provision

The House could consider the fiscal 2008 defense authorization conference report later this week, but only if negotiators decide quickly whether to include an unrelated hot-button provision, aides said Monday.

An informal House-Senate conference has resolved all but one issue in the sweeping national-security policy measure — whether to include a Senate amendment expanding race-based hate-crime laws to include crimes committed against people because of their gender, sexual orientation or disability. The provision would set new penalties and authorize spending to support state and local prosecutions of such crimes.

House Democratic leaders plan to decide in the next day or two whether to include the provision, aides said. It is considered vital by many in the Democratic constituency who have been lobbying House leaders to include it in the final defense bill.

But the provision could jeopardize the whole bill. In the House, liberals upset over war spending could join forces against the bill with conservatives concerned about the hate crimes language. The Senate vote could be tight, too, because in late September only 60 senators — the bare minimum needed — voted to overcome a filibuster of the hate crimes amendment.

If the decision is made by Tuesday on whether to include the provision, the conference report could come to the House floor as early as Thursday, aides said.

This is post #666 to this blog which started this year!

A Presidential Call to Congressional Action

Bush Scolds Congress for Inaction
President Bush welcomed the Democratic-led Congress back from Thanksgiving break this morning with a stern warning and a blunt to-do list.

Bush Steps Up Attacks on Congress
With his approval ratings stubbornly low, President Bush is trying to gain political traction by spoiling for fights with an institution the public appears to hold in even lower esteem: Congress.

Countdown to Christmas

Legislative Update

• Foreign Policy: Iraq, Intelligence
• Domestic Policy: Taxes, Spending
• Heartland Issues: Energy, Farming, Global Warming
• Expiring Health Care
• Stem Cell Research

Congress returns from its Thanksgiving recess on Tuesday, December 4, with a lot on it's Christmas shopping list. In terms of foreign policy, Iraq and intelligence bills top the priority list. Domestically, taxes and spending will be the most noticed issues Congress addresses this month.

In terms of issues affecting the Heartland, Congress also intends to take up bills related to energy, farming, and global warming. The President is not pushing any of these bills and has threatened to veto at least one of them.

Yesterday's political compromises are today's political emergencies, and nowhere is this clearer than where politics and science intermingle: expiring health care funding.

Two days before Thanksgiving, news broke on the front pages of mainstream newspapers, that researchers in Wisconsin and Japan had turned ordinary human skin cells into what are effectively embryonic stem cells without using embryos or women's eggs.

We have been handed an opportunity to turn the tide!

Read today's edition of Inside the Mountain for more.


12/2/2007 Update:
A Daunting 3 Weeks Ahead for Congress
Congress returns to Washington on Monday with a full slate of must-do legislation, just three short weeks before the Christmas recess and with four members of the slim Democratic Senate majority likely to miss votes as they campaign for president.

Embryonic Stem Cell Debate Ending?

November 2007

International Herald Tribune:

A stem cell breakthrough, without embryos
Two teams of scientists reported Tuesday that they had turned human skin cells into what appear to be embryonic stem cells without having to make or destroy an embryo - a feat that could quell the ethical debate troubling the field.

Washington Post:

Advance May End Stem Cell Debate
Researchers in Wisconsin and Japan said yesterday that they have turned ordinary human skin cells into what are effectively embryonic stem cells without using embryos or women's eggs -- the previously essential ingredients that have embroiled the medically promising field in a nearly decade-long political and ethical debate.

Michael Gerson: Stem Cells, the Right Way
To our many reasons for thankfulness, we can now add the pioneering brilliance of Shinya Yamanaka and James Thomson -- scientists who may this week have joined a short list that includes Gregor Mendel and Marie Curie. The breakthrough is stunning: four genes introduced into normal skin cells, enticing them to act like embryonic stem cells, which can be transformed into the 220 cell types of the human body. Somehow a piece of skin, after a few weeks of lab work, can become the cell of a beating heart.

Charles Krauthammer: Stem Cell Vindication
James A. Thomson, the first to isolate human embryonic stem cells: "If human embryonic stem cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough." Last week, he (and Japan's Shinya Yamanaka) announced one of the great scientific breakthroughs since the discovery of DNA: an embryo-free way to produce genetically matched stem cells. Even a scientist who cares not a whit about the morality of embryo destruction will adopt this technique because it is so simple and powerful. The embryonic stem cell debate is over.

San Jose Mercury News:

Both sides applaud stem-cell advance
Advocates on both sides of the ethically charged debate over human embryonic stem cells hailed two breakthrough studies unveiled Tuesday that suggested simple human skin cells might one day lead to a vast array of new treatments without destroying embryos. Until now, researchers hoping to use stem cells to create replacement organs and medicines for numerous diseases had assumed their best hope was with human embryonic stem cells, which have the flexibility to turn into any tissue type. But the studies, published in the journals Cell and Science, indicate that other cells plucked from a person's hand or face may be just as useful.

Stem-cell science outruns political debate (CGS Archive)
Research teams at two prestigious universities announced a major feat of biological alchemy this week: They've taken ordinary human cells and turned them into cells with all the characteristics and promise of embryonic stem cells. This entirely new way to derive what the researchers are calling induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells uses neither eggs nor embryos. Instead, it reprograms body cells, reactivating genes that return them to the undifferentiated state characteristic of "conventional" embryonic stem cells. If the new technique holds up, it will also reprogram the science and politics of stem-cell research.


TED: Stem cell news is a step forward for regenerative medicine
This morning's pair of announcements on human stem cell research marks a step forward for regenerative medicine -- the study of regrowing or repairing body parts, using the body's own processes. Alan Russell's 2006 TEDTalk is a fascinating roundup of what regenerative medicine could bring: revolutionary treatments for heart disease, severe burns, even the loss of a part of the body.


CGS: Moving Beyond the Stem Cell Wars
The dramatic news that pluripotent human stem cells can be generated without having to destroy human embryos opens a new chapter in the politics of stem cell and other human genetic research. We are now in a position to move beyond the polarized debate of the past decade and focus on ensuring that stem cell research moves forward, and that it is used in ways that promote rather than undermine social justice, equality and the common good. These are important and exciting times for all who care about the responsible use and effective governance of the new human biotechnologies.

FRC: Congressional Ideologues and Ethical Science

We thanked God together last week for the earthshaking news that leading scientists have learned how to "reprogram" human skin cells to become embryonic-like stem cells. This breakthrough will allow the advance of stem cell research without harvesting, cloning and destroying human embryos. Dr. Ian Wilmut, who cloned "Dolly" the sheep, now rejects human cloning research in favor of this new technique.

Despite this evidence, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), Rep. Dianne DeGette (D-CO) and others have said they will continue to push legislation to fund embryo-destructive research.

FRC's Dr. David Prentice says now is the time for those in Congress who are serious about scientific advancement in this field, to support ethical stem cell research and pass the Brownback-Weldon cloning ban.

Bioethics Blog Secondhand Smoke:

Stem Cell Lead into Gold: "Man Who Started Stem Cell War May End It"
James Thomson, the scientist who derived the first human embryonic stem cell lines, says that contrary to some of the biotech spinners, the ground has fundamentally changed with the discovery and expected coming improvements in the still relatively rudimentary iPS cell (induced Pluripotent Stem Cells) technology.

Stem Cell Counter Attack
If anyone thought that the pro human cloners would fold up their tents and steal away after the news was released that patient-specific, pluripotent stem cells had been derived from normal skin cells, they just didn't understand how fervently some scientists and their camp followers want to clone human life--and how hopeful some are that the stem cell issue can be the vehicle that wins the culture war.

Technique Already Being Improved
Yamanaka's team report that they can now produce these so-called induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells, without having to resort to a cancer gene found to cause tumours in many of the lab mice in the earlier experiment. If confirmed, it will remove a significant safety hazard in using these cells in transplants one day.


October 2007

Senate Democrats Cite Meeting Bush 'Halfway'
Democrat Tom Harkin of Iowa, who chairs the Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Subcommittee, said Democrats had made a major concession to Bush by dropping a provision that would have expanded federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.
Senate - Labor, HHS, Education Appropriations (continued)


June 2007

A Cell in Time Saves Lives? (FRC Archive)
Three independent teams managed to reprogram skin cells to their embryonic state in mice.


November 2006

Bioethicist Wesley J. Smith reported that "the Japanese scientist who reverted skin cells to embryonic stem cells--a perfectly ethical procedure--also reported that they cause tumors in mice, just as do embryonic stem cells derived from embryos."


Additional Resources:

• Sen. Dr. Tom Coburn - Stem Cell Information
• StemCellResearch.org - Do No Harm: The Coalition of Americans for Research Ethics

12/3/2007 Update:
Defensive Ideologues Dig In
Here are three examples of the ridiculous commentary on the new iPS techniques, all from entrenched embryonic stem cell research ideologues - with financial interests in the field - who are resorting to defensive posturing.

Congress Next Week, Beyond

CQ: The Week Ahead: House Could Consider Energy Measure, Senate Back to Farm Bill
Next week's legislative schedule remains in flux as Congress returns, with House action possible on an intelligence authorization conference report and a new energy package while the Senate could consider electronic surveillance legislation and resume work on the farm bill.

A tentative deal on a new energy package would strengthen fuel economy standards and mandate billions of gallons of ethanol and other biofuels to be incorporated into gasoline over the next 13 years. The agreement, if finalized, would resolve major discrepancies between two energy measures (HR 6 and HR 3221) that have already passed each chamber this year. If the measure makes it to the House floor by midweek, it could set up action in the Senate by the end of next week.

House floor action is also possible on the intelligence authorization bill (HR 2082), provided that the remaining obstacle — the naming of House conferees — occurs next week. Negotiations have all but wrapped up on the House and Senate versions of the measure, ensuring quick action once a conference agreement is formalized. The annual intelligence authorization bill covers the nation’s 16 spy agencies and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and provides Congress an outlet to make policy prescriptions for the intelligence community.

The Senate next week could take up a bill (S 2248) to overhaul the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA, PL 95-511). One of the major battles is expected to be over the inclusion of language that would provide retroactive legal immunity for telecommunications companies accused of cooperating in warrantless surveillance by the federal government. The bill is intended to replace a temporary measure that Congress cleared just before the August recess (PL 110-55). That law, set to expire in February, permits the administration to conduct warrantless surveillance of any targets located abroad, even if they are communicating with individuals in the United States. Like the House-passed measure (HR 3773), the legislation approved by the Judiciary panel does not contain immunity provisions for telecommunications companies. However, the Intelligence Committee approved a version in October with the retroactive immunity included. When the bill reaches the floor, the Judiciary Committee’s substitute could take the form of an amendment. The White House has threatened to veto legislation that does not grant retroactive immunity.

The Senate also could turn its attention back the 2007 farm bill (HR 2419) next week. Action on the five-year authorization stalled before the two-week Thanksgiving recess as senators were unable to reach an agreement on a long list of amendments and a time frame for debate. The White House has threatened to veto the $283 billion legislation.

Energy, Intelligence Bills on Next Week's Congressional Agenda
The House next week is likely to consider a new energy package that would strengthen fuel economy standards for the first time in three decades.

Congress Returns to Washington With Key Priorities Unfinished
House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) urged Congress to complete work on key priorities on behalf of the American people before the upcoming Christmas break, echoing the call by President Bush today in his Saturday radio address.

2008 Taxes

Taxpayers Await End to Standoff Over AMT Fix
Millions of American taxpayers have a stake in decisions Congress must make in the next few weeks about maintaining various tax breaks that expire at the end of this year.

12/1/2007 Update:
IRS Board Warns - $70 Billion in Refunds Delayed!
The Internal Revenue Service Oversight Board sent a letter this week to Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) expressing a "grave concern" about the Senate deadlock on the alternative minimum tax (AMT).

Looking Back - Past Activity

Business Groups Seek Clarification of New Lobbying Law
Three trade groups asked Congress Wednesday for clarification of a major lobbying overhaul they complained would require naming members that previously remained anonymous. But advocates of the law (PL 110-81), which was enacted in mid-September, argued that the goal was to make public the names of individual companies pushing for legislation, rather than allowing them to hide behind umbrella organizations.

Looking Ahead - January 2008

As the Senate looks to take up the Indian Health Care Improvement Act (S. 1200) early next year, Senator David Vitter plans on introducing a pro-life amendment very similar to the Hyde Amendment that would prohibit taxpayer money via the Indian Health Service from being used for abortion.

White House Wish List

President's Radio Address
Congress must address four critical priorities.

1. First, Congress needs to pass a bill to fund our troops in combat.
2. Second, Congress needs to make sure our intelligence professionals can continue to monitor terrorist communications so we can prevent attacks against our people.
3. Third, Congress needs to pass a bill to protect middle-class families from higher taxes.
4. And fourth, Congress needs to pass all the remaining appropriations bills to keep the Federal Government running.

Iraq

Bush Urges Emergency War Funds to Avoid Defense Layoffs
President Bush warned Congress yesterday that the Pentagon will soon have to start laying off civilian employees and reducing operations at U.S. military bases unless lawmakers send him an emergency war funding bill that does not mandate troop withdrawals from Iraq.

AIDS

Bush Urges Congress to Approve Additional AIDS Funds
President Bush today marked World AIDS Day by touting his administration's spending on the fight against the disease and calling on Congress to approve his plan to double funding for battling HIV/AIDS overseas to $30 billion over the next five years.

Senate Environment Committee - S. 2191: Global Warming Vote, December 5

Sen. Boxer Tweaks Global Warming Bill in Search for Votes
The head of the Senate Environment Committee has made changes to a global warming bill that could help build support for it in advance of a committee vote scheduled next week.

Changes Could Improve Chances for Global Warming Bill
The chairman of the Senate Environment Committee has made a number of changes to a global warming bill that could help build support in advance of a committee markup next week. The bill (S 2191) narrowly won subcommittee approval Nov. 1. Most Republicans on the full committee are likely to vote against it, while several Democrats have flagged concerns they want addressed in order to ensure their support.