This week, the House took up some important legislation. I am glad to report to you that on Tuesday, the House passed the bipartisan Thomas R. Carper Water Resources Development Act of 2024, S. 4367, which authorizes water infrastructure studies and projects across the country. Importantly, the bill includes language instructing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to complete the Buffalo Bayou and Tributaries Resiliency Study (BBTRS) by the end of 2025, which I requested be included in a joint effort with Congressman Wesley Hunt (TX-38). Since my first term in Congress, I have prioritized protecting our community from flooding by supporting water infrastructure projects and studies—including BBTRS. I am glad that after years of advocating for the completion of this study and collaborating with community leaders across our region, the bill requires a timely completion of the BBTRS so that we can begin work to authorize the identified solution in the future. I was glad to vote for this bipartisan legislation, which passed the House by a vote of 399-18.
That same day, the House considered the Liberty in Laundry Act, H.R. 7673, a bill that restricts the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) ability to finalize and enforce efficiency standards for clothes washers. Specifically, the bill prohibits DOE from issuing, updating, or enforcing energy conservation standards for these appliances unless the standards are determined by the department to be technologically feasible, economically justified, unlikely to increase net costs for consumers, and to provide significant energy savings. Under existing law efficiency standards must be cost-effective, result in significant savings, and be technologically feasible and economically justified. The washing machine standards targeted by this bill were part of a consensus recommendation made by appliance manufacturers and efficiency advocates in September 2023. By adding new, cumbersome, and duplicative requirements to the standards-setting and enforcement process, this bill would effectively prevent the DOE from enforcing recently finalized efficiency standards. For these reasons, I voted against this bill which passed by a vote of 215-200.
On Wednesday and Thursday, the House considered two important bills that I had hoped to be able to support, the Fiscal Year 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), H.R. 5009 and the JUDGES Act of 2024, S. 4199. Because of procedural tricks and failures to honor bipartisan compromise in connection with these two bills, I felt it was important to voice my objection to the breakdown of the process by voting no this week.
In every other year, I have voted to pass the final version of the NDAA, which is annual legislation to authorize our nation’s defense spending—important legislation that typically passes with bipartisan support. As you may recall, I voted against the House version of the FY25 NDAA earlier this year because the version that the House considered included problematic, partisan amendments that failed our servicemembers and their families. At the time, many of my Democratic colleagues and I voted against the FY25 NDAA as written, with the hope that the House and Senate would confer on the final legislation and remove those harmful amendments. House Democrats were successful in blocking many harmful, partisan provisions that attack the military’s diversity programs, the LGBTQ+ community, and access to reproductive health care from the bill, I am disappointed that the version of the bill the House considered this week contained restrictions on health care for military families that were added outside the regular process of negotiation by the Speaker of the House. This was a surprise to both the Republican Armed Services Committee Chairman and the Democratic Ranking Member on the committee. In the end, I voted with the Ranking Member against the bill for reasons both procedural and substantive. Servicemembers should not have to choose between serving their country and ensuring their family members get the health care they need. And members of Congress should not substitute their abstract judgment for those of people seeking health care, especially our military families. For these reasons, I voted against this version of the FY25 NDAA, which passed the House by a vote of 281-140 and will now go back to the Senate. And while my objections were important to register, there are important and good provisions in the bill that I am glad will support our service members and their families going forward, including a 14.5 percent pay raise for junior enlisted service members and a 4.5 percent pay raise for all other service members as well as improvements for housing, health care, childcare, and spousal support, authorizing in total $883 billion in overall spending.
On Thursday, the House considered the JUDGES Act of 2024, S. 4199, which creates 63 new permanent district court judgeships across the country. This bill, too, presented a difficult set of issues. As a former courtroom lawyer, I know that it would be beneficial to have more federal judges on the bench and to reduce the backlog of cases waiting to be heard. This has been an issue for many years, and I support addressing the backlog in a meaningful way. Unfortunately, this bill, too, reflects partisan gamesmanship on the part of the House leaders. While I believe the JUDGES Act of 2024 does address some of the issues facing our judicial system, I have deep concerns about the appointment process, including during the last Trump administration, which saw multiple lifetime appointments for judges the nonpartisan American Bar Association rated as unqualified. The bill’s authors have promised to introduce a new bill in the next Congress that addresses some of these concerns. For these reasons, I voted against this bill, which passed by a vote of 236-173. This bill now heads to President Biden, who has indicated that he will veto it.
As a reminder, you can always find a list of all of the votes I have taken for the district on my website.
