Declaring his belief that America needs "a surge in the war on poverty," Senator Coons appeared on MSNBC's Morning Joe on Friday to talk about the fight over unemployment insurance and the future of the American economy.
With senators expected to take dozens of votes on amendments to the Senate's budget resolution over the next 36 hours, Senator Coons' staff will live-blog the votes to provide some context on how he voted and why.
This amendment would deny federally subsidized health care for immigrants who were ever unlawfully present in the U.S., even if they ultimately achieve legal status, LPR, or citizenship. This would include participation in Affordable Care Act exchange subsidies. Senator Coons believes this would be unfair to families, youth, seniors (especially because they have to pay federal income taxes). This amendment would affect DREAMers and create a second class of citizenship. Chris voted against the amendment, 43-56.
Senator Coons believes that climate change must be confronted head-on and that preventing the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases, as this amendment would do, is dangerous. Climate change is of serious concern to Delaware, especially given the threat of sea level rise. This amendment would limit our ability to mitigate the problem. This amendment would block EPA’s work to use the Clean Air Act to reduce carbon emissions, as they were authorized and mandated to do in a Supreme Court order. The environmental community, including NWF, NRDC, and Sierra Club opposes the amendment. Chris voted against the amendment, which failed, 47-52.
Senator Coons supported a bipartisan budget amendment to establish a national network for manufacturing innovation that leverages private and public sector investments for proven United States based manufacturing industries. Chris has been working hard to unleash the power of next-generation manufacturing to create good quality jobs. The amendment passed by voice vote.
As a co-chair of the Senate Law Enforcement Caucus, Senator Coons co-sponsored and supported an amendment to help state and local governments implement evidence-based law enforcement tools. Supporters of this amendment include the National Criminal Justice Association, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the Fraternal Order of Police, the Major Counties Sheriffs Association, the National Sheriffs Association, the National Narcotics Officers Associations Coalition and the National Troopers Coalition. The amendment passed by voice vote.
As a champion for energy efficiency, Senator Coons voted for a budget amendment to invest in energy efficiency retrofit programs and weatherization for low-income households. Chris has said that “energy efficiency is one of the smartest, strongest ways that we can see progress in the country.” The amendment passed by voice vote.
Senator Coons is a co-sponsor and a strong supporter of this amendment to help the families of service members and military veterans by expanding educational opportunities, increasing access to job training and placement services, tracking and reporting on suicides of family members, ensuring high-quality and affordable health care, and improving military housing. The amendment passed by voice vote.
Senator Coons is a strong supporter of ARPA-E, which leads us forward in game-changing energy innovation. He co-sponsored and strongly supported this amendment to increase the funding for ARPA-E in a deficit neutral way. This amendment increases ARPA-E funding by $50 million over 10 years, but offsets that investment from existing reserve funds and budget allowances. The amendment passed by voice vote.
Senator Coons is fighting to protect our environment and preserve our natural resources for future generations. He knows that many Delawareans have strong feelings about the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, and believes it is extremely important that this project go through the full and thorough established review process, which the Administration is currently undertaking. The President has final authority to approve or deny the Keystone XL pipeline. Senator Coons voted for an amendment to the budget that takes into account the existing process, and the reality that if the Administration approves this project it will have a budgetary impact. The amendment passed 62-37.
Senator Coons voted for two side-by-side budget amendments to help bring Medicare payments back to Delaware hospitals. These amendments fix a Medicare provision that was hurting Delaware – as well as the majority of other states in the nation – by requiring Medicare’s hospital wage reimbursements to be drawn from a national pool instead of a statewide allocation. As a result, two states were drawing a disproportionate share of funds at the expense of other states. The News Journal detailed the issue last month.
Medicare reimbursements help hospitals in Delaware pay doctors and nurses and buy equipment. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services estimated that the provision these amendments are trying to fix has cost Delaware $5.6 million over two years.
The Menendez amendment failed 49-50 and the Coburn amendment passed 68-31.
The Senator will call into WDEL to talk with Allan Loudell about the budget at 5:30. Click here to stream it.
Senator Coons voted for an amendment to the budget that would protect access to healthcare and contraception for women.
Chris is a longtime advocate for women’s health. At a roundtable discussion last summer, he said “all women should have the right to affordable, accessible reproductive health care.” The vote passed, 56-43.
Another day, another attempt by Congressional Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act (aka "Obamacare"). The ACA provides access to stable and secure health care for 30 million Americans and protects more than 129 million individuals from being discriminated against due to pre-existing conditions, and it allows parents to have their sons and daughters covered on their plans until they are 26 and preventative care will come without a co-pay or deductible. This was an easy one. As he has in the past, Senator Coons voted against this amendment. It failed, 45-54.
An amendment to support equal pay policies for men and women was among the first batch of budget votes Friday morning, and it was approved by voice vote.
Senator Coons is a strong supporter of the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would help ensure that women in Delaware and around the country earn equal pay for equal work as a matter of basic fairness.
Women in Delaware on average earn 81 cents for every dollar paid to men. Over their lifetime, that means they'll earn nearly half a million dollars less than their male counterparts.
Chairman Murray can't be on the floor every minute of the day during the debate and vote-a-rama, so Senator Coons is managing the floor for the Democrats from 9:30 to 10:00. Ish. That means he'll speak on behalf of the Democratic budget, refute arguments made by Republicans, and allocate speaking time to other Democrats.
Before the Senate resumes votes on amendments to the budget resolution, Senator Coons will appear on MSNBC's Morning Joe at 7 a.m. and will call into Dan Gaffney's show on 105.9 FM in Sussex County at 7:45 a.m.
The #Senate has concluded voting for the evening. The next votes on #SenateBudget will occur at 11am ET tomorrow.
— Senate Budget Cmte (@SenateBudget) March 22, 2013
Senator Coons voted in favor of this amendment because it protects Medicare for our seniors and prohibits replacing guaranteed benefits with the House passed budget plan to turn Medicare into a voucher program. The vote passed, 96-3.
Voted against the Ryan budget tonight. Its priorities are all wrong for our country, chief among them, killing 2 million jobs.
— Senator Chris Coons (@ChrisCoons) March 22, 2013
The second vote brought the budget passed by House Republicans to the Senate floor, giving senators the opportunity to vote yes or no on House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s plan to end Medicare as we know it and make dangerously deep cuts to investments in our country’s future. Senator Coons was a strong 'no' vote on the Ryan path to austerity, and in fact, he spent much of Thursday making sure his colleagues knew that the House Republican plan fails the basic tests of balance, fairness and values, as opposed to the budget passed by the Senate Budget Committee, which responsibly reduces our debt and deficit without sacrificing our values. The vote failed, 40-59.
The Senate's leadership has announced there will be five votes starting Thursday at 8:00 p.m., then six votes Friday at 11:00 a.m. After two hours of debate, the vote-a-rama will begin at 3:00 p.m.
Tonight's five votes: Sessions motion to recommit; Murray #433 (Ryan budget); Hatch #297 (medical device tax repeal); Stabenow #432 (Medicare vouchers); Grassley #156 (reserve fund-rax reform).
Senator Coons stood with his colleagues in a press conference in the Capitol Thursday morning to compare the Democratic and Ryan/Republican budget resolutions. Watch below.
It’s hard to watch the news lately without hearing about the “fiscal cliff” awaiting Americans early next year — more than $500 billion in automatic spending cuts, tax increases and other fiscal changes set to kick in starting in January.
These questions, coupled with the paralyzing federal budget deficit and national debt, will have a significant impact on Delawareans.
Although I’ve worked on deficit reduction consistently during my two years in the Senate, my staff and I have invested additional time and energy these last few months preparing for the immediate economic choices required by the events of the fiscal cliff. Just as we do with our legislative briefing emails, I wanted you to have access to some of the same background and analysis that I do.
We’ve put together a white paper on the fiscal cliff — a primer on the economic issues Congress and the President are now working to confront — to give you a better idea of what to expect.
Click here for your copy of the white paper and to share your opinion on the fiscal cliff.
As it stands now, our budget deficit and national debt are simply unsustainable. A $1.3 trillion deficit and $16.3 trillion debt are unacceptable. This level of debt hurts our nation’s competitiveness, causes interest rates to rise over the long term and crowds out critical investments in our country’s future.
Congress should get a big, bipartisan deal done now to reduce our deficit and avert the very significant impact of the fiscal cliff, rather than waiting until next year.
It seems like an easy choice to simply kick the can down the road again, but the reality is that our country will need to make an array of tough decisions about our competing economic priorities over the next few months – priorities like keeping taxes low, investing in critical services, reducing our unsustainable annual deficits and stabilizing our debt.
I hope you’ll download my new white paper and share your opinion on the fiscal cliff.
There is no doubt that we can keep our nation moving forward, but we’ll have to work together to do it. Balance is the only responsible solution.
Best –
Chris Coons
U.S. Senator