Before the House reconvened for votes on Tuesday, I joined my colleagues on the Regional Leadership Council (RLC) for a meeting at the White House with White House Deputy Chief of Staff Natalie Quillian, Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo, and Director of Legislative Affairs Shuwanza Goff to discuss the implementation of projects made possible by the legislation we passed in the last Congress, including the Inflation Reduction Act, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and the CHIPS and Science Act. 

The laws we passed and the programs they created have resulted in projects, investments, and jobs across the country, including:

• 67,000 projects announced
• $910 billion in private sector investment
• 19 states with the highest private sector investment they have ever had
• 16 million new jobs
• $160 million in grants to support clean U.S. manufacturing.

In Texas, these bills have led to $35 billion in public investments in clean energy, infrastructure, and manufacturing projects; ushered in more than $157 billion in private sector manufacturing and energy investments in the state; and added more than 1,796,400 new jobs, which now has a low 4% unemployment rate.  As a result of these laws, projects like Texas Instruments’ and Samsung’s semiconductor plants and innovation cluster, Harris County’s $249 million project to transform access to distributed solar, and Tesla’s $10 billion electric vehicle gigafactory are all moving forward in Texas. 

We also focused on progress on the health care initiatives and efforts to bring down costs for Americans from these bills.  In Texas, 4.7 million seniors and other Medicare beneficiaries will save money on prescription drug costs.  And more than 3.5 million people have signed up for health insurance through the ACA Marketplace. I was glad to report back to the White House on what we are seeing in Texas, and to continue the conversation about how we can continue this work.

With a potential government shutdown at the end of this month on all our minds, the House reconvened to consider the legislation proposed to fund the government.  Speaker of the House Mike Johnson brought to the House floor a resolution to continue funding the government for six months, H.R. 9494, that was deeply problematic and that has no chance of becoming law.  The proposed resolution failed, with Democrats and Republicans voting against it for many reasons, including that its provisions do not include adequate funding for veterans, national defense, and communities affected by disasters and because it also included the text of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act.  The SAVE Act requires citizens to show “documentary proof of citizenship” to register to vote.  It is already illegal for noncitizens to register to vote or to vote in federal elections.  Voter registration applications are vetted by secretaries of state and election officials in each state.  By requiring a passport or birth certificate in order to register to vote, the SAVE Act places an unnecessary burden on countless Americans, including military voters, people who have changed their names (including tens of millions of American women), the elderly, the young, the poor, and naturalized citizens, and it makes it more difficult for states and election workers to register voters.  For these reasons, I voted against the bill, which failed to pass the House by a vote of 202 for -220 against.

That means we are still without a continuing resolution to fund the government, but the House and the Senate are now—finally—working on the bipartisan resolution that should have been written in the first place to fund the government until December, providing time to complete the appropriations process during this calendar year, free of partisan policy changes.  We expect to vote on that resolution next week.

The remainder of the week was largely devoted to what the House Republicans called “woke” policy and their objections to it.  On Wednesday, the House took up the Protecting Americans’ Investments from Woke Policies Act, H.R. 5339, which would require fiduciaries of job-based retirement plans to prioritize financial returns solely over environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors when making investment decisions.  The Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) of 1974 already requires fiduciaries to put participants’ financial interests above all else in the investment management process.  Here, House Republicans are willfully misinterpreting the U.S. Department of Labor’s 2022 rule, which does not in fact force fiduciaries to consider ESG factors, but allows such factors to be considered when they do not sacrifice returns or bring on additional risk.  The bill restricts the ability of fiduciaries of job-based retirement plans to make informed investments, reducing savings and retirement security for participants and beneficiaries.  For these reasons, I voted against the bill, which passed the House by a vote of 206-213.  The House also voted on Wednesday on the Anti-BDS Labeling Act, H.R. 5179, which codifies a Trump-era rule requiring products originating from Area C of the West Bank to be labeled as "Made in Israel."  The bill does not provide flexibility for the administration to align policy with respect to future changes in U.S. foreign policy, which is critical to ensuring both peace and security for Israelis and Palestinians.   For these reasons, I voted against the bill, which passed the House by a vote of 231-189.

Also on Wednesday, the House considered the Violence Against Women by Illegal Aliens Act, H.R. 7909, which purports to expand the grounds for inadmissibility and deportability of noncitizen migrants if they are convicted of, admit to having committed, or admit committing acts that constitute a sex offense, and establishes a new ground of inadmissibility for domestic violence related offenses.  More than 200 national and local organizations that serve and advocate on behalf of victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, human trafficking, and other forms of gender-based violence opposed this bill because it is redundant, a political attack, and harms survivors.  Despite its name, this bill does not protect victims of sexual assault or domestic violence, and it does not actually solve any problems with our immigration system or at our border.  For these reasons, I voted against the bill, which passed the House by a vote of 266-158.

On Thursday, the House considered the End Woke Higher Education Act, H.R. 3724, which would prohibit accreditation standards from requiring institutions of higher education to support or oppose political views or ideologies and mandate schools adopt policies on student groups and free speech on campus.  This bill is part of a larger attempt by House Republicans to attack diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and programs in colleges and universities across the country.  This partisan legislation is a thinly veiled attempt by House Republicans to attack diversity and academic freedom in higher education, and would undermine efforts to make our colleges and universities welcoming to all students.  For these reasons, I voted against the bill, which passed the House by a vote of 213-201.  Also on Thursday, the House also considered on the Prioritizing Economic Growth Over Woke Policies Act, H.R. 4790.  This bill would limit the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC’s) ability to require companies to disclose critical information about themselves and the risks they face, which is currently mandated by the law.  It also restricts shareholders’ and the SEC’s ability to direct companies to adopt policies that would protect the environment, promote employee welfare and diversity, and limit mismanagement.  For these reasons, I voted against the bill, which passed the House by a vote of 215-203.

On Friday, the House considered the No Bailout for Sanctuary Cities Act, H.R. 5717, which would prohibit the distribution of federal funding that can be used by “sanctuary cities” to provide food, shelter, health care, transportation, and legal services for undocumented immigrants.  This bill to punish cities and localities that are providing for the basic needs of immigrants by effectively stripping billions in federal funding from cities and countries across the country—and in some cases, entire states—based on how their law enforcement agencies interact with the Department of Homeland Security is not in the interest of our community in Houston.  The bill’s broad language would cut off billions in federal funding for programs that do not explicitly exclude undocumented immigrants, including federal highway funding, FEMA disaster and emergency assistance, domestic violence support programs, and school lunch and breakfast programs.  For these reasons, I voted against the bill, which passed the House by a vote of 219-186.

The House also voted on Friday on a resolution of congressional disapproval, H.J.Res.136, of the rule submitted by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) relating to “Multi-Pollutant Emissions Standards for Model Years 2027 and Later Light-Duty and Medium-Duty Vehicles”.  In short, this bill would repeal the EPA rule and block the agency from taking any further action to reduce air pollution from light- and medium-duty vehicles.  I have previously voted against this bill, and I voted against it again, but it passed the House by a vote of 215-191.

We did do a few good things this week, including passing a bill I co-sponsored to award Billie Jean King a Congressional Gold Medal!

As a reminder, you can always find a list of all of the votes I have taken for the district on my website.

On Wednesday, the Energy and Commerce Committee had an all-day markup of 16 bills, including two significant pieces of data privacy legislation, the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), H.R. 7891, which would require online platforms to take certain measures to protect minors under the age of 17 online from a list of defined harms, and the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0), H.R. 7890, which would provide privacy protections for minors under the age of 13 and restrict companies from collecting personal information on children without their consent.

I have heard from many of you about the need for federal privacy legislation to protect our children and teens from online harms, and I agree that Congress must pass comprehensive privacy legislation so that such dangers to our children and teens are addressed.  These bills present an important opportunity to protect our kids.  Unfortunately, the versions of the two bills that we were considering were amended less than 24 hours before the markup.  Although these changes raised concerns with me and my Democratic colleagues, the committee passed both of these bills by voice vote so that these bills can be strengthened in conference with the Senate to be more like with the prior versions.  It is my hope that Congress will pass a comprehensive, bipartisan bill that will protect the online privacy of our children—as well as a data privacy bill for all Americans.  

We marked up several other bills that passed on a bipartisan basis, including the Telehealth Modernization Act of 2024, H.R. 7623, which extends certain telehealth flexibilities under Medicare for two years, and the Give Kids a Chance Act of 2024, which authorizes the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to direct drug companies to conduct pediatric cancer trials on combination therapies.  I voted against three other bills that would prevent the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) from fulfilling its regulatory responsibility of setting safe nurse staffing standards and would weaken training requirements for nursing home staff.  There is a strong correlation between staffing levels and the health of nursing home residents and we have a duty to protect the health and safety of people living in America’s nursing homes.  Despite my votes, the bills passed out of our committee.

You can watch a recording of the full press conference here and you can read the resolution here.

Also this week, I co-sponsored several other pieces of legislation on issues important to our community, including: 

• the State Firearm Dealer Licensing Enhancement Act, H.R. 1595, to establish a grant program for states to develop or improve firearm dealer licensing programs;
• a resolution expressing the send of the House of Representatives that every person has the basic right to emergency health care, including abortion care, H.Res. 1448; 
• the Roberto Clemente Commemorative Coin Act, H.R. 6751, to direct the Department of Treasury to mint and issue coins in recognition of the life of Roberto Clemente, a major league baseball player and human rights activist; and 
• the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Modernization Act, H.R. 2422, to extend the prohibitions in the CALM Act that limit the loudness of TV advertisements to all advertisement-support streaming services. 

I always enjoy seeing Houstonians while I’m in Washington.  During this busy week with lots of votes and an all-day markup, I was glad to have a few minutes to catch up with Harris County Commissioner Adrian Garcia and with representatives of the Asian American Hotel Owners Association from our district.