Here’s how local members of the U.S. House were recorded on major votes during the legislative week of March 3. See the nonpartisan VoteFacts.com for more information on top congressional issues and individual voting records. Click here for previous votes.
Michael Lawler (R), District 17 (including Philipstown)
Lawler, 36, was elected to Congress in 2022. From 2021 to 2022, he was a Republican member of the state Assembly from the 97th district in Rockland County. A graduate of Suffern High School, he holds a bachelor’s degree in accounting and finance from Manhattan College. He is a former director of the state Republican Party and former deputy town supervisor of Orangetown.
Pat Ryan (D), District 18 (including Beacon)
Ryan, 40, was elected to Congress in 2022. Formerly the county executive of Ulster, he grew up in Kingston and holds a bachelor’s degree in international politics from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and a master’s degree in security studies from Georgetown. Ryan served in the U.S. Army as a combat intelligence officer from 2004 to 2009, including two tours in Iraq. He is also a former technology executive.
Nulifying Biden Rule for Retirement Plans
The House on Feb. 28 voted, 216 for and 204 against, to kill a new Department of Labor rule that more clearly defines circumstances under which employer-sponsored retirement plans may consider companies’ environmental, social and governance (ESG) practices when deciding where to invest workers’ pension funds.
Under the rule, plan administrators (fiduciaries) would still be required to give top priority to financial returns in making investment decisions. But when competing investment opportunities offer nearly the same risk and return, the plans could choose the one that better serves ESG objectives such as using clean energy or improving workplace conditions. The Biden administration rule would replace a Trump administration regulation generally barring fiduciaries from ESG investing. With this vote, the House adopted a GOP-sponsored resolution of disapproval (HJ Res 30) that would cancel the Biden rule, which took effect Jan. 30 after two years in the making.
Rick Allen (R-Ga.): “Retirement plan sponsors have two responsibilities to their clients — maximize returns and minimize risk. The Biden rule would allow asset managers to impose a political agenda on Americans at the expense of retirement savings. The Biden administration should not be jeopardizing Americans’ retirement by allowing plan managers to gamble their savings on ESG funds that have proven to be riskier and charge steeper fees.”
Sean Casten (D-Ill.): “ExxonMobil and Chevron today are trading at about 8 to 9 times their earnings. I would compare that to companies like First Solar and Tesla that are trading to 40 to 60 times earnings. Let me dumb this down for you all — 10 years ago, if you shifted your investment portfolio away from fossil energy toward climate-friendly investments, you would be richer today. Now, my Republican colleagues… are taking individual investors’ freedom away from them with this bill.”
A yes vote was to send the resolution of to the Senate, where it was passed and sent to the president for his promised veto.
Michael Lawler (R-17, including Philipstown) voted yes
Pat Ryan (D-18, including Beacon) voted no
Focusing Presidential Attention on Inflation
Voting 272 for and 148 against, the House on March 1 passed a bill (HR 347) urging President Biden to consider official inflation estimates by the executive branch’s Office of Management and Budget and Council of Economic Advisers when he issues presidential orders having an impact of at least $1 billion on the federal budget. The bill requires Biden to regularly report the estimates to Congress, but otherwise it is only advisory.
James Comer (R-Ky.): “Pushing one big-spending policy after another, President Biden has continued to throw fuel on the inflationary fire. That fire is rapidly consuming the wages of our constituents. They have had to pay higher and higher prices for everything from eggs to electricity, all while inflation pushes their real wages further and further behind. President Biden just does not seem to get it or admit it.”
Cori Bush (D-Mo.): “If Republicans were serious about fighting inflation and cutting costs for regular, everyday people, they would have joined with Democrats to pass critical legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act to rebuild American manufacturing and lower the cost of prescription drugs, healthcare, energy, and other goods and services for the people of our country rather than pushing an extreme MAGA [Make America Great Again] messaging bill that accomplishes nothing.”
A yes vote was to send the bill to the Senate, where it was likely to fail.
Michael Lawler (R-17, including Philipstown) voted yes
Pat Ryan (D-18, including Beacon) voted yes
Counting Rural Spending in Inflation Tallies
By a vote of 324 for and 83 against, the House on March 1 adopted an amendment that would include spending patterns by military personnel and rural populations in the inflation measurements at the heart of HR 347 (above). The Consumer Price Index (CPI) is based on spending in urban areas, where prices are usually higher than in rural areas or near military bases. If the CPI were expanded under the terms of this bill, the official rate of inflation would presumably go down. On Jan. 31, the CPI’s annualized rate of inflation, based on spending by urban consumers, was reported at 6.4 percent by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Mike Bost (R-Ill.) “What about the 46 million Americans who live in rural areas or the 2.6 million workers … on a farm, or the 1.3 million in the military? They are crushed by inflation, as well…. They deserve to be represented, to be heard” in the government’s inflation calculations.
Jamie Raskin (D-Md.): “Obviously, we want to make sure that military personnel, farm households and residents of rural areas are included … even if that means bringing the inflation rate down, something I imagine President Biden would quite enjoy.”
A yes vote was to adopt the amendment.
Michael Lawler (R-17, including Philipstown) voted yes
Pat Ryan (D-18, including Beacon) voted yes
Internet Posting of Inflation Estimates
By a vote of 386 for and 31 against, the House on March 1 adopted an amendment requiring the Office of Management and Budget and Council of Economic Advisers inflation estimates ordered by HR 347 (above) to be posted on the OMB website. The original bill left out this basic transparency step, an omission noticed by a congressman who had read the bill.
Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.): “Without my amendment, the real-life consequences of Joe Biden’s spending spree … will not be seen by those impacted most. This will provide transparency for the administration to answer to the American people…. Economic strength and job growth result from policies that unshackle job creators, allow American ingenuity and provide certainty.”
Jamie Raskin (D-Md.): “I heard [Boebert] mention job creators. I assume she was responding to President Biden since 12 million new jobs have been created under President Biden, whereas millions of jobs were lost under the prior president, who may be a favorite of the gentlewoman’s.”
No member spoke against the amendment. A yes vote was to adopt the amendment.
Michael Lawler (R-17, including Philipstown) voted yes
Pat Ryan (D-18, including Beacon) voted yes
Marshaling U.S. House to Fight Inflation
By a vote of 364 for and 56 against, the House on March 1 adopted an amendment to HR 347 (above) stating “that combating inflation and bringing down the cost of living” is the job of the U.S. House as well as President Biden.
Nicholas Langworthy (R-N.Y.): The amendment “states an obvious fact: It is the responsibility of both the president and the House of Representatives to combat inflation. I have no quarrel with that. In fact, in advancing this bill, the House is taking one step toward fulfilling its responsibility to combat inflation.”
Jamie Raskin (D-Md.): Under the Constitution, “it is Congress that is supposed to be laying and collecting taxes … and dealing with the debt of the country. It is Congress that regulates commerce among the states and with foreign countries. So the failure to come forward with real productive legislation on inflation is also a surrender to the executive branch, and we don’t need to do that.”
No member spoke against the amendment. A yes vote was to adopt the amendment.
Michael Lawler (R-17, including Philipstown) voted yes
Pat Ryan (D-18, including Beacon) voted yes
Setting Target Numbers for Inflation Reports
By a vote of 187 for and 232 against, the House on March 1 rejected an amendment to HR 347 (above) that sought to limit the scope of the bill to executive orders estimated to increase or decrease the Consumer Price Index’s yearly rate of inflation by at least one percentage point. The amendment sought to replace language that applied the bill more broadly to presidential orders having “a significant impact” on inflation.
Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) said the specificity was needed because “we cannot run the government by ambiguity, confusion, lack of clarity, and just throwing language down on the floor and expecting all the pieces of government to work together.”
Nicholas Langworthy (R-N.Y.): “Few individual executive orders, even ones that stoke inflation significantly, would on their own raise inflation by one full percentage point or more. What the amendment really is trying to do is gut the bill.”
A yes vote was to adopt the amendment.
Michael Lawler (R-17, including Philipstown) voted no
Pat Ryan (D-18, including Beacon) voted no
U.S. Senate
Killing Biden Rule for Retirement Plans
Voting 50 for and 46 against, the Senate on March 1 joined the House (above) in rolling back a new Department of Labor rule giving managers of retirement funds specific authority to consider a company’s environmental, social and governance (ESG) practices when deciding where to invest workers’ pension funds.
The rule enshrines in regulations what had been only general departmental guidance allowing fiduciaries to consider all relevant economic factors when choosing investments. The Trump administration issued a rule making it difficult for managers to consider ESG factors such as clean-energy practices in their investment decisions, and the Biden administration is attempting to reverse that action. With this vote, the Senate sent to President Biden a GOP-sponsored resolution (HJ Res 30) that would kill the new rule.
Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.): The rule is part of an “unrelenting campaign to weaken our energy security, our national security and our economic security to advance, truly, their environmental and social agenda. The ESG rule … is just another example of how our administration prioritizes a liberal policy agenda over protecting and growing … the retirement accounts of 150 million Americans that will be in jeopardy.”
Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii): The GOP-drafted resolution “only the latest step in a campaign to prevent American financial institutions from making money from the clean energy revolution, and it should offend anyone who supports free markets…. They are just losing. People don’t want to invest in fossil fuel anymore, and so they are asking the Congress to intervene on their behalf.”
A yes vote was to nullify the Biden administration rule.
Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) voted no
Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) voted no
