Request for Info: Why did Sen. Kerry vote against the Ag Bill

[TayTay]

He voted for it, as did most of the Senate, before the conference committee got to it. What particular things ticked him off. (Oh, and Kennedy voted for it. Was it because of the strange voucher stuff Teddy wanted?)

What's up with this one. I don't know the specific reason why Sen. Kerry voted no. (And Sens. Clinton and Boxer also voted Aye.)

Just curious. I was asleep at the switch and missed this one.

[Mass]

1. Dorgan and Harkin voted also NO as did Feingold

- Two issues as I understand it:
- labelling of country of origin
- funding cuts for conservation of lands.

If you want more read this

statementshttp://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/legislative/g_three_sections_with_teasers/legislative_home.htm

Congressional report - point 6

[TayTay]

2. Interesting! Thanks!

Was Teddy Kennedy's amendment allowing for federal funds to be spent on religious or voucher schools temporarily in the Gulf area in this bill.

(Strange to have Kennedy supporting vouchers. But his reasoning is sound if it is indeed a very temporary solution to a unique problem.)

Ahm, not to be a smart-ass, but any ethanol requirements?

[Mass]

5. Senate OKs Bill That Delays Meat Labeling

God forbid that we know what we eat. And now organic will mean nothing.

I am happy that Kerry voted NO.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051103/ap_on_go_co/food_farm_programs;_ylt=Amu_H0poy94MOQ6ZOvCcU2es0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3OXIzMDMzBHNlYwM3MDM-

Senate OKs Bill That Delays Meat Labeling

By LIBBY QUAID, Associated Press Writer 35 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - The Senate on Thursday sent a $100 billion food and farm spending bill to
President Bush that includes a two-year delay on labels telling grocery shoppers where their meat comes from.

...
Approved on an 81-18 vote, the food and farm spending bill would postpone mandatory meat labeling until 2008. Originally sought by Western ranchers and required by law in 2004, country-of-origin labeling has stalled under pressure from meatpackers and supermarkets who call it a record-keeping nightmare.

The measure also unravels a court ruling on whether products labeled "USDA Organic" can contain small amounts of non-organic substances. Earlier this year, an appeals court ruled that non-organic substances such as vitamins or baking powder can't be in food bearing the round, green seal.

More than 200 companies and trade groups said the ingredients are processing aids needed for making organic yogurt and many other products, and congressional negotiators agreed.

[TayTay]

6. Whoa, Mad Cow disease gets a boost.

Doesn't this make tracing meat combines harder. (Isn't that a pending problem with the meat food chain.) not good.

Also, vote-a-rama denied the reinstatement of pay-as-you-go rule that the Rethugs dumped a while ago. Sigh!

Everything is being challenged by the non-germaine rule. A reverse filibuster by the Rethugs. (Liars.)

Now they are about to defeat an amendment that frees up money for veterans health. Not germaine to an appropriations bills. Sigh!

[Mass]

7. Pay as you go rollcall is interesting

Democrats YES 43 (Corzine absent)
Jeffords YES
Republicans YES 6 NO 49

Also, they voted down the Lincoln amendment: Medicaid for displaced victims of Katrina.

and Ensign Amdt. No. 2404; To provide assistance for elementary and secondary schools and students, and institutions of higher education, affected by Hurricane Katrina. (Is it the amendment Kennedy cosponsored?)

[karynnj]

8. Corzine should have voted on this

Pay to play is a huge issue in NJ at the state and local level - and the election is Tuesday. (So he may be here) I just hope it's not used as a last minute issue - although it would have lost with 50 anyway.

[TayTay]

9. I think the Ensign Amend. was a poison-pill

maneuver that would have made the vouchers permanent or made it easier for the Govt. to provide funding to faith-based schools in the future. I think it failed because of this.

I haven't seen the actul vote yet though.

Vote-A-Rama is just awful so far. (BTW, Frist is the one who called it vote-a-rama last night. LOL!)

[MH1]

12. Organic yogurt??

I've been buying organic yogurt made by Stonyfield Farms and it's just fine. I wonder where they stand on this issue?

I just looked at their website but don't see anything about this bill specifically. However I find their information about the USDA Organic label rather interesting:

http://www.stonyfield.com/Organic/

100% Organic Made with 100% organic ingredients

Organic Made with at least 95% organic ingredients, with strict restrictions on the remaining 5% including no GMOs

Made With Organic Ingredients Made with a minimum of 70% organic ingredients with strict restrictions on the remaining 30% including no GMOs

Products with less than 70 percent organic ingredients may list specific organically produced ingredients on the side panel of the package, but may not make any organic claims on the front of the package.


Any product labeled as organic in the US, must contain a minimum of 95% organic ingredients produced to the US National Organic Standards, and be verified, inspected and certified by independent state or private organizations that have been accredited by the USDA. Any product with the USDA seal must be a minimum of 95% organic.

So, what is the point with the new stipulation? These options seem to cover the bases pretty well. And are pretty generous in their allowance for adulterants. I am so confused.....

[TayTay]

13. Oh wow! There manufacturing plant is just miles from me.

They are on the up-and-up. They mean organic in the sense that you think about it.

This applies to the big food conglomerates that want to market to the upscale market that shops at "Whole Foods Market.' They want to be able to have their cake and eat it to by marketing organic stuff, but not being strickly organic in their framing procedures. (They can't anyway. Big farming destroys organic principles. Sigh!)

[MH1]

14. Very cool....

Part of my point was that they do just fine making yogurt according to the current standards. Which is labeled "Organic", not "100% Organic" btw, meaning that there may be 5% non-organic in it. And that's fine, because people who care about it can tell the difference.

If this new bill is lowering that standard below 95%, or eliminating the differentiation between "Organic" and "100% Organic", that's really too bad.

[TayTay]

3. Vote-a-rama is hurting my head.

We need to talk about the second degree amendment before the first degree amendment and then the first degree amendment becomes moot because the second degree amendment went belly-up.

What?

Vote-a-rama today is going to be strange. Need decaf.

This is really bad. They have, in about an hour, exceeded my wonky ability to figure out what the hell it is they are talking about. It's going to be a long day.

[Mass]

4. Look who is at the chair -

Murkowski is making things probably more complex than they are.

[TayTay]

10. ANWR is up.

Oh boy! We'll see if it gets a germaineness challenge.

Nope, it's an up-or-down vote.

[TayTay]

11. The prohibition amendment lost

The Senate votes down this amendment to prohibit drilling in ANWR.

It's up to the House now.

Why couldn't we get the Dems from Hawaii on this? That would have made the difference. (And Corzine.)

[jillan]

15. I can't keep up on anything here.

I leave the room for a few minutes, come back, and they are on a completely different amendment.

Guess they have to make up for lost time from Tues. haha.

[Goldeneye]

16. I remember reading that they made a deal with the

republicans. They vote for ANWR drilling, republicans vote favorably for some Hawaii related bill. It was something about the status of the term pacific islander if I remember correctly.

[jillan]

17. The Schumer amendment was just voted down

It would have lowered generic prescription drug prices for those on medicare.

I can't take it.

[Mass]

18. Not very happy with my senators

They just voted against the Byrd amendment, which would have made H1B visas more expensive. (so did the senators from CA, NY, NJ, WA, ...).

I understand why they did it, but I cant be happy with it.

[TayTay]

19. Wasn't there typical Rethug overkill on this?

I think we should let a lot less H1B visas out, but didn't the Rethugs poison pill this with all sorts of anti-immigrant language. It didn't sound good to me.

[Mass]

20. No, this is an amendment sponsored by Byrd and no Repubs voted it

(except Vitter because there was money there for LA and Inhoffe - I guess OK does not have a lot of hightech industries).

Our senators voted for the companies that are in their states (MA, CA, ... are big users of H1Bs).

Except for Durbin, those who voted with Byrd come from states that do not use a lot of H1Bs.

Here are the YES votes:
YEAs ---14
Akaka (D-HI)
Byrd (D-WV)
Dayton (D-MN)
Dodd (D-CT)
Dorgan (D-ND)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feingold (D-WI)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Jeffords (I-VT)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Rockefeller (D-WV)
Sessions (R-AL)
Stabenow (D-MI)
Vitter (R-LA)

High tech industries are big money for democrats and particularly liberal democrats. Even a great senator like Kerry, Kennedy, or Boxer has to please them once in a while and this one is an easy one as Byrd did not have the vote anyway.

A good reason to have a real campaign finance reform.

[wisteria]

21. Thank you for the information!

I mistook this bill for something else and am guilty of not paying enough attention to some important bills.

[TayTay]

22. True!

Bill Gates used to be a big Dem contributor until he started blaming the Dems for the lawsuit that tried to break up Microsoft. I saw that last year he gave $1.2 mil to the Repubs. Sigh!

We do need campaign finance reform. But we have to elect Dems to get it. So, in the mean time we have to deal with what we got. You go to elections with the finance system you have, not, well, you know.

[MH1]

27. Interestingly, WV is quietly picking up a lot of tech,

according to my brother who lives there. Of course they desperately need the employers to employ West Virginians rather than imported low wage workers. So maybe Byrd was trying to preempt the exploitation of his constituents.

I'm really disappointed in the Mass senators on this one, too. :-(

Maybe if I read up on the amendment and their stated reasons for voting against it, I'll understand better. I just don't know why in the heck we are letting corporations hire foreigners on visas when there are plenty of Americans that should have a chance at those jobs.

[Mass]

28. No reasons stated either by them or Boxer.

Business lobbying, I guess, the same way that Byrd voted for the Energy Bill even though the bill is terrible and he knows it is. I guess that, until there is a real campaign finance reform that is worth it, they will have to do things for these people, and it is better to do so in an amendment that would not have passed anyway.

Anyway, there is worse than H1bs these days: F1 visas where you create a branch in a foreign company and you can have the people work in the US with a very minimal visas with the conditions of the country of origin. It is the latest thing in India.

[LittleClarkie]

23. What is an H1B visa. I've never heard of them

And why do we want to make them more expensive?

[TayTay]

24. Specialty visa that allow people with specific skills

into the country to work. There are a lot of foreign high tech workers here on H1B's. There is a great deal of concern that the sheer numbers of these folks depress the market for American born workers and depress the wages.
Mass: Do you have a better def?

[Mass]

25. No this is what it is supposed to be.

This is supposed to be a good thing. If you need somebody and there is nobody in the States to do the job, it is a mechanism to help the foreign person come into the country w/o an immigration visa that can be very long. The people are supposed to be paid the same way an US resident is. In addition, there are quotas.

The problem is that, in the last 5 years, the system has been largely abused to replace well-paid workers by lower paid (not necessarily less qualified), less demanding foreign workers (typically from India and China). Part of the issue is linked to the fact that the US does not produce enough engineers, but now, there are a lot of people who have been laid off in the early 2000s, are in their 40s or early 50s, highly qualified and are still w/o equivalent jobs. These people could be easily retrained to the most recent techniques and hired, but these companies prefer either to outsource or to hire workers that they can exploit more easily.

(Sorry, this is a subject I am quite into, because my husband is in this category and he is always told he is too old and too experienced, then they say they don't have people who have the profile).

[sandnsea]

32. Nurses coming in too

I don't know if it's on H1B's or another visa program, but that makes me mad too because there's a school shortage creating the nursing shortage. Already blathered about that one. There's just too many people underemployed in this country for me to be convinced we need nurses from overseas, doesn't take that long to educate LPN's.

[MH1]

26. The reason my job sucks.

Okay, that's rather broad brush. So let me explain.

H1B's allow employers to hire foreigners at lower wages and with tighter control (H1B visa is tied to a specific job) than typically American workers. It's not that American workers don't want the jobs. It's not that there is no American qualified. It's that the employer makes out better by hiring the foreigner.

I also read recently that H1B'ers don't necessarily (ever?) pay American income tax. That could go a long way in explaining why they accept significantly lower pay. (I haven't corroborated that though.)

So, why does this make my job suck? Well, I would like nothing more than to have a job I can leave at the office when I walk out that door (unless of course I find a job that directly relates to improving society in some way. But that's another story). But anymore all those jobs are going either overseas, or to H1B's. I had an opportunity recently to do what I want. I passed on it because it looks like career suicide. Worse, if I go that route I can expect to be out of a job or unable to change jobs in about 5 years, unless something turns around, and I see no hope of that. So, I am continuing to do what I had hoped to get away from. Which means some days the office comes home with me. And that sucks.

(can you tell I'm not a big fan of H1B's?)

[LittleClarkie]

29. Doesn't exactly go with Kerry's position on outsourcing

or Benedict Arnold corporations, does it.

But then, like I just said out on the boards, it was a token vote that would please Mass. industry. If his vote would have actually mattered, I wonder if he would have voted the same.

[Mass]

30. Not outsourcing. Some of the jobs are still for the US residents.

It is still better than outsourcing, as bad as it is.

Anyway, he is barely the only one. Obviously, this is a vote for local industry. My guess is that they think it is better to preserve the jobs than to see the jobs go overseas.

It is also possible that the bill has a problem that I do not see. Who knows? The bill was not planning to reduce H1Bs, just to make them more expensive.

[TayTay]

33. Thanks everyone for clarifying this!

I have a much better understanding of this now. (And my heart goes out to all of you who are so badly affected by this.)

[Mass]

31. More info concerning the Bill and the Byrd amendment in the CR yesterday

In fact, none of our senators voted for THE BILL AND THEREFORE FOR THE INCREASE IN H1Bs.

Senator Byrd is correct in raising the matter now and objecting and offering this amendment to fix it--what came out of the Judiciary Committee. The current bill language will increase the H-1B visa cap by over 30,000 a year and increase the number of permanent employment-based immigrants, not temporary, by 90,000 a year. Additionally, the current bill language allows all family members of the workers to immigrate to the U.S. and exempts family members from being subjected to the cap. They are currently allowed to immigrate, but are subjected to the annual cap. These changes compose a huge, important policy statement. These extra visas will indeed increase revenue, because an additional fee will be charged for each of these additional visas, but this is not just a budget decision.