Representative Lizzie Fletcher

Dear Neighbor,

It was another busy week in Washington. Here are this week’s highlights.

We returned to Washington this week knowing that funding for many government agencies would expire Friday at midnight, and a partial government shutdown was once again a possibility. The House and Senate appropriations committees continued their work on these funding bills for Fiscal Year 2024 (from October 1, 2023 to September 30, 2024). The text for the bill, the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2024 (H.Res.1102), was released around 3:00am on Thursday morning, with the expectation that the House would vote on the bill, which was more than 1,000 pages, on Friday morning.

It should go without saying that this is not how things should work. And it’s not the way things usually do work. This Congress has been uniquely dysfunctional. But the House and Senate appropriations committees worked together to put together these bills with bipartisan support that could pass the House with a 2/3 majority (because it could not be brought to the House floor through the traditional process). The House did vote on the bill as planned, and it passed by a vote of 286-134. I voted for it. Now, the bill is moving through the Senate.

Here is a summary of some key provisions in this package of six funding bills for Defense; Financial Services and General Government; Homeland Security; Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies; Legislative Branch; and State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs.

Defense

$39.9 billion for medical and health care programs of the Department of Defense;
Prioritizes support for military families, including increasing pay by 5.2 percent, the Basic Allowance for Housing by 5.4 percent, and the Basic Allowance for Subsistence by 1.7 percent;
Protects our national security, preserves our domestic advanced manufacturing base to support jobs and grow the economy, and invests in research and development; and
Protects women’s rights by preserving the Department of Defense’s travel policy to ensure servicemembers and their families can access reproductive healthcare.

Financial Services & General Government

Assists small businesses and entrepreneurs through the Small Business Administration (SBA) and Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI);
Protects our democracy with Election Security Grants that ensure the integrity and safety of our elections; and
Supports the Administration’s 5.2 percent pay increase for Federal workers.

Homeland Security

$1.6 billion for border management requirements, including Border Patrol processing facilities, transportation requirements, migrant medical needs, and other costs;
$29.9 million to support the reunification of families separated at the U.S.-Mexico border during the Trump Administration;
$20 million for an additional 150 CBP Officers to support counter fentanyl efforts;
$160.1 million for refugee processing, asylum, and work authorization backlog reduction;
$111.1 million for the E-Verify program; and
Provides funds for investments in border security.

Labor-HHS-Education

$48.6 billion for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), including $7.2 billion for the National Cancer Institute;
$1 billion increase for child care and Head Start programs;
$100 million increase for Alzheimer’s and Alzheimer’s disease-related dementias research;
$1.9 billion, equal to fiscal year 2023, for the Health Centers program;
$1.4 billion for health workforce training, including an increase of $5 million for nursing programs and an increase of $5 million for Children’s Hospitals Graduate Medical Education;
$2.6 billion for the Ryan White HIV/AIDS program; and
$286 million for Title X Family Planning.

State and Foreign Operations

$25.3 billion for FEMA, including $274.5 million for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program;
12,000 additional Special Immigrant Visas for Afghans that assisted the United States;
$8.9 billion for international security assistance to allies and partners globally through international narcotics control and law enforcement activities, antiterrorism programs, nonproliferation programs, peacekeeping operations, and other critical international security efforts; and
$10 billion to support the health of families and communities around the world.

In addition, the House also voted on an important bill we passed in the House Energy and Commerce Committee two weeks ago by a 50-0 vote, the Protecting Americans’ Data from Foreign Adversaries Act (H.R. 7520). The bipartisan legislation protects Americans’ sensitive personal data by prohibiting data brokers from selling that data to foreign adversaries or entities controlled by foreign adversaries.

Data brokers aggregate and sell vast amounts of Americans’ sensitive information for profit on nearly every consumer in the United States, including information about children and active members of the U.S. military. The United States does not currently have a comprehensive federal privacy law limiting the amount and types of data collected on consumers nor protections empowering individuals to prohibit data brokers from collecting and transferring their sensitive information. As a result, data brokers are free to profit by selling Americans’ sensitive data, including to foreign adversaries. This bill works in connection with the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (H.R. 7521), which passed the House last week. The breadth and scope of sensitive information aggregated by data brokers makes them a unique threat to national security and individual privacy, and I voted again in favor of this bill.

It was CERA Week in Houston, and House Republicans called it energy week in Washington, bringing several energy-related bills and resolutions to the floor this week. That included the Protecting American Energy Production Act, H.R. 1121, to prevent a President from banning hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in states without first receiving approval from Congress. While President Biden has not suggested or indicated that he is even considering banning the practice, I voted yes to ensure our energy security and our status as a net energy exporter. The bill passed by a vote total of 229-188.

The House also considered several bills I opposed, including the Restoring American Energy Dominance Act, H.R. 6009, which would undo parts of the Inflation Reduction Act with protections important for responsible drilling and the Cutting Green Taxes and Corruption Act, H.R. 1023, which would also repeal two key provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act: the Greenhouse Gas Reduction fund, which provides grants to communities like ours to reduce local emissions, improve air quality, and ensure low cost energy, and the Methane Emissions Reduction Program, which establishes new thresholds to reduce excess emissions in the oil and gas sector and includes more than a billion dollars in grants to help companies deploy emissions reducing technology. It passed the House by a vote of 209-204. We also considered a resolution, H.Con Res 86, expressing a sense of Congress that a carbon tax of any kind would be detrimental to the United States economy. A carbon tax is a tax levied on the carbon emissions from producing goods and services. The idea is that, with a set carbon price, goods and services that produce more emissions will have higher prices and lower consumer demand, increasing incentives for companies to lower emissions across multiple sectors of the economy. While a carbon tax is supported by some industry trade groups, including the American Petroleum Institute and many oil and gas companies in Houston, there are also potential challenges. This blanket statement about all potential future policies that could be enacted, with no specific plan in mind, seemed unnecessary and I voted no. Likewise, I voted no on another nonbinding resolution, H.Res. 987, titled “Denouncing the harmful, anti-American energy policies of the Biden administration.” While I have disagreed with the Biden Administration on some energy-related policy matters over the years, I spoke on the floor about why this resolution was neither accurate nor productive. You can watch my remarks during debate, here or below:

Finally, the House also considered the Creating Confidence in Clean Water Permitting Act, H.R. 7023, a bill from the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee containing a number of changes to the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System and Nation Wide Permits (NWPs) through the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. When developers of projects that stretch across states and multiple bodies of water are planning projects, they seek a NWP from the Corps. These permits are often used for projects like pipelines, transmission lines, and other lengthy pieces of infrastructure. The Army Corps evaluates the proposal to make sure any discharge, dredge, or fill material does not pose a threat to the waters of the United States. The proposed bill would improve much of the process for applying for an NWP, streamlining the application, ensuring finality of approvals, and codifying existing practices for consultations required to receive a permit. Many of these provisions would help develop more essential infrastructure throughout the country on a faster timeline. It also contained several problematic provisions that led me to vote no at this time, including unworkable limitations on judicial review of project approvals (60 days) and unreasonable limitations on public input while weakening standards against protection for PFAS in our water supply and exempting mining and landfill companies from discharging certain pollutants. I will continue to work with my colleagues to advance the provisions many in our community support and have raised with me and my team, and remain committed to pushing for meaningful permitting reform. The bill passed the House 213–205.

In addition to these bills debated on the floor, the House passed several bills under suspension of the rules, with brief debate and broad bipartisan support, including:

Upholding the Dayton Peace Agreement Through Sanctions Act (H.R. 4723), to mandate sanctions on foreign persons who undermine the Dayton Peace Agreement or otherwise threaten the stability of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Condemning the illegal abduction of children from Ukraine to the Russian Federation (H.Res. 149), a resolution stating that the House of Representatives holds the Russian government responsible for the illegal kidnapping of children from Ukraine and condemns these actions.
Ocean Shipping Reform Implementation Act of 2023 (H.R. 1836), to secure American ports and supply chain from the influence of the Chinese government.

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

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

the Keeping Our Promises Act, H.R. 7028, to require the Secretary of State to reissue diversity visas that were not honored to successful recipients because of the Muslim Ban implemented during the Trump administration;
the Fair and Open Skies Act, H.R. 4021, to increase the Department of Transportation’s powers to regulate unfair business practices from foreign airlines that negatively impact people who work for the airlines;
the Multiple Firearm Sales Reporting Modernization Act, H.R. 4202, to require a gun dealer to notify the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) when a person purchases multiple guns in a short period of time, enabling the ATF to work with state and local law enforcement to intervene before a shooting occurs;
the Honoring Our Fallen TSA Officers Act, H.R. 871, to extend public safety officers' death benefits to Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees killed in the line of duty;
the Wise Investment in Children (WIC) Act of 2023, H.R. 3364, to amend the Child Nutrition Act of 1966 to increase the age of eligibility for children to receive benefits under the special supplemental nutrition program for women, infants, and children; and
the Strength in Diversity Act of 2023, H.R. 3444, to establish a program through which the Department of Education may award planning and implementation grants to specified educational agencies to improve diversity and reduce or eliminate racial or socioeconomic isolation in publicly funded early childhood education programs, public elementary schools, or public secondary schools.

I also joined my colleagues in a letter to House and Senate leaders requesting immediate short-term funding for the Affordable Connectivity Program, which is expected to run out of funds next month and which many neighbors have contacted me about in recent weeks. You can read our letter here.

On Wednesday, the Energy and Commerce Committee held an all-day full committee markup on 28 bills from the Communications and Technology; Health; and Energy subcomittees, considering the security of our communications systems, pipeline safety and energy efficiency, and public health infrastructure and support for our health care workforce. All of these bills passed out of Committee, some with unanimous support. One of the bills we marked up is our committee’s bill to reauthorize the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) which plays a key role in enforcing safety regulations for our nation’s pipeline system. I worked on this bill as a member of the Transportation and Infrastructure (T&I) Committee during my first term in Congress. This Congress, the T&I Committee passed a bipartisan reauthorization bill more than a year ago, and its bill is the one people in our district who work on pipeline safety matters prefer. As a result, I offered an amendment during debate to make our committee’s bill conform to some of the provisions of the T&I bill, raised concerns about inadequate funding in our bill, and, ultimately voted against advancing the bill out of our committee, as I believe the T&I bill is the one the House should consider. You can watch my remarks here:

On Wednesday, as Co-Chair of the American Canadian Economy and Security (ACES) Caucus, I met with Canadian Ambassador to the U.S. Kirsten Hillman and fellow Co-Chairs of the ACES Caucus for Canada’s exposition day on the Hill, where we celebrated the friendship between our two countries and our work together.

Later that evening, the Library of Congress awarded its annual Gerwshin Prize for popular song, and I was able to attend the evening presentation with an amazing tribute to this year’s recipients, Elton John and Bernie Taupin. You can watch it, too. It is scheduled to air on PBS on April 8!

I had some great meetings with people from our area, including a productive meeting with the leaders of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from the Galveston District to discuss the Buffalo Bayou and Tributaries Resiliency Study and other projects, as well as members from the Texas Chapter of the United Postmasters and Managers of America and others visiting the Capitol.

Washington was buzzing this week and so was our office, holding more than two dozen meetings with groups and organizations from home including those pictured below from KIPP Texas, Texas Appleseed, Global Business Alliance, the University of Texas, Texas A&M Health, Texas Trio Association, AIDS United, and BikeTexas and BikeHouston (which just won a national award for its advocacy to make our streets safer for cyclists!).

Back home, in addition to helping constituents at the office, Team TX-07 attended Space Center Houston’s Moon 2 Mars Festival and the HISD Foundation State of the District luncheon.

More good news for TX-07! I am thrilled that the Biden administration will award Harris County Precinct Four $1.2 million from the Department of Transportation’s Reconnecting Communities Pilot Program—a program established in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that we passed in the last Congress. I was glad to support Precinct Four’s application. These funds will allow Harris County to develop safe pedestrian and cycling connections between communities on both sides of the Westpark Tollway in Alief, enhancing quality of life for residents of Alief and connections between neighborhoods and schools, healthcare facilities, and workplaces throughout the community. I am grateful to Precinct Four Commissioner Lesley Briones for her partnership, leadership, and vision, and I look forward to continuing to work together for our community.

The annual Congressional Art Competition is happening now! High school artists in TX-07 can submit their art for the competition and a chance to have it displayed at the U.S. Capitol or our district office for the next year. To learn more, please click here and please share with any district students who might interested.

The House recessed Friday for a two-week period. I look forward to spending some time at home in the district visiting with neighbors, meeting with community leaders, and celebrating holidays and milestones. I look forward to sharing an update on my time at home in Houston, and a preview of what the House will work on in April, at the end of this two-week period.

I am proud to represent you and I am always here to help you. Please call my office at (713) 353-8680 or (202) 225-2571, or email here, at any time to ask for assistance or share your thoughts. I look forward to hearing from you.

Best wishes,