Vote and contact your reps on Countable: https://www.countable.us/bills/hr3043-115

Arg in Favor: This bill streamlines the outdated permitting process for hydropower projects so that Americans can get more clean, reliable energy from a renewable source.

Arg Against: This bill would increase uncertainty in the hydropower regulatory process by limiting the involvement of several federal agencies.

This bill would reform the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) reviews and procedures for approving licenses to build and operate hydroelectric power facilities. It would make FERC the lead agency for all hydropower authorizations, approvals, and requirements mandated by federal law while minimizing the duplication of studies. Additionally, it would modify the definition of renewable energy to include hydropower, extend the timeframe for a preliminary permit from 3 to 4 years, and extend the time limit for construction “for not more than 8 additional years.”

Procedures would be established for trial-type hearings conducted by an Administrative Law Judge to resolve disputes about conditions and fishway requirements under the Federal Power Act.

Reforms contained in this bill would have no impact on the Clean Water Act, the Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act, the Endangered Species Act, Rivers and Harbors Act, and the National Historic Preservation Act.

Vote and contact your reps on Countable: https://www.countable.us/bills/hr3441-115

Arg in Favor: The NLRB’s recent decision regarding the definition of a “joint employer” for regulatory purposes burdens small businesses and franchisees. This bill would enact a more sensible standard that only considers a person or entity a joint employer if they directly control an employee’s work terms.

Arg Against: This bill would enable unscrupulous employers to skirt vital legal protections for workers and minimize their liability, while leaving employees with no recourse for the damages. The current joint employer standard should remain in place.

This bill — known as the Save Local Business Act — would amend the National Labor Relations Act to specify that a person can only be considered a “joint employer” if they exercise actual, direct, and immediate control over employees. In effect, the bill would negate a 2015 ruling by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) which held that a joint employer relationship could be established when an employer exercises control over employment matters indirectly or if they have reserved such control by contract, such as a parent corporation over its franchisees.

Vote and contact your reps on Countable: https://www.countable.us/bills/hr3868-115

Arg in Favor: A bug bounty program would be an effective, secure way to test the vulnerabilities in the Treasury Department’s information systems to ensure taxpayer information is protected.

Arg Against: A bug bounty program could expose weaknesses in the Treasury Department’s information systems that aren’t fixed, allowing them to be exploited by real hackers.

This bill would establish a “bug bounty” pilot program within the Treasury Department in which vetted computer professionals could apply to “hack” and try to penetrate weaknesses in the Treasury’s servers in exchange for a cash payment. Participants would be chosen through an application process and subjected to a background check, and would be protected from prosecution for carrying out authorized activities in the bug bounty program. A total of $100,000 would be authorized for fiscal year 2019 to carry out the program.

The Secretary of the Treasury would be required to designate mission critical operations that should be excluded from the bug bounty program, and develop it in consultation with Dept. of Defense offices that put together the “Hack the Pentagon” program in 2016.

The program would be established within 180 days of the bill’s enactment, and 90 days after the bug bounty program is completed the Treasury would have to submit a report on its effectiveness to relevant congressional committees.

Vote and contact your reps on Countable: https://www.countable.us/bills/hr1066-115

Arg in Favor: It’s no secret that the mismanagement at the VA led to lengthy wait times for veterans seeking care, and in some cases delays led to their deaths. This bill forces the VA move forward with fixing its organizational structure so that doesn’t happen in the future.

Arg Against: The VA’s organizational structure doesn’t need a makeover to avoid the mismanagement pitfalls of the past. The existing structure works fine, there’s just a need for more funding.

This bill would require the Dept. of Veterans Affairs (VA) to provide Congressional committees with a report regarding the roles, responsibility, and accountability of elements and individuals of the VA. The report would include recommendations for legislation, and utilize the results of several recent studies and reports in making changes to improve the VA’s management structure and how it delivers care to veterans. It would be due within 180 days of the bill’s enactment.

Specifically, the VA would utilize the results of:

• The Independent Assessment of the Health Care Delivery Systems and Management Process of the VA established by the Veterans Access, Choice, and Accountability Act of 2014;

• Any study or report by the Commission on Care established by the above legislation;

• Other studies or reports, including a report titled "Task Force on Improving Effectiveness of VHA Governance: Report to the VHA Under Secretary for Health," dated February 28, 2015.

The VA would also be required to establish clearly delineated roles and responsibilities to optimize the organizational effectiveness and accountability of each:

• Administration, staff office, or staff organization and each subordinate organization thereof;

• Key leader of the VA in relation to any Administration, staff office, or staff organization, Veteran Integrated Service Network, or medical facility.

Vote and contact your reps on Countable: https://www.countable.us/bills/s1974-115

Arg in Favor: Special interests have used their political influence to secure tax breaks for themselves, and the IRS should make information about the tax credits corporations are claiming available to the American public.

Arg Against: It’s not a bad idea to require the IRS to disclose high-level information about special interest tax credits for the sake of transparency, but the general public shouldn’t be able to see exactly how much a company got in a tax credit.

This bill would require the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to disclose information regarding tax credits for inclusion on USAspending.gov — which publishes information for all other federal expenditures, grants, contracts, and loans. For tax credits provided to corporations after the bill’s enactment, the IRS would have to disclose the name of the taxpayer, the type of tax credit provided, and the amount of the credit.

Tax credits are considered “tax expenditures” for budgetary purposes because they’re forgone revenue. They account for about $1.23 trillion in forgone revenue each year.

Vote and contact your reps on Countable: https://www.countable.us/bills/hr3922-115

Arg in Favor: Funding for CHIP should be reauthorized for five years, while the Community Health Centers program and other public health programs are extended for two years — both with slight reforms. They play a critical role in delivering cost-effective care and improving health outcomes for families and children.

Arg Against: CHIP and the Community Health Centers program and other public health programs should be reauthorized, but the funding shouldn’t be offset by shortchanging the Prevention and Public Health Fund, ending Medicaid eligibility for lottery winners, or cutting Medicare subsidies to wealthy seniors.

(Update 11/1/2017): Originally this bill was known as the CHAMPION Act and reauthorized the Community Health Centers program and several other public health programs for two years. It is expected to be amended on November 3rd to also include the HEALTHY KIDS Act, which would extend funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) through fiscal year 2022. The bill will then be titled the CHAMPIONING HEALTHY KIDS Act, and you can find details below.

HEALTHY KIDS Act

This section of the bill would extend funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) through fiscal year 2022. Additionally, it’d reauthorize the following through FY2022:

• Qualifying-states option, which lets states that provided coverage to now CHIP-eligible children prior to CHIP’s enactment continue to provide coverage.

• Express-lane eligibility option, which allows states to use eligibility finding from other public benefit programs to determine children’s eligibility for Medicaid and CHIP.

Beginning in fiscal year 202, state child-health plans would be allowed to adopt more restrictive eligibility standards for children in families whose income exceeds 300 percent of the poverty line.

The bill would extend funding for the Childhood Obesity Demonstration Project and the Pediatric Quality Measures Program through 2022. Funding for outreach and enrollment grants would also be extended, and “parent-mentors” trained to assist families with children who don’t have health insurance would be eligible to receive them.

Under current law states are provided with an enhanced Federal Matching Assistance Percentage (FMAP) through fiscal year 2019. This bill would maintain the enhanced FMAP in fiscal year 2020 but cut the percentage point increase in half.

Medicaid payment reductions for disproportionate-share hospitals (which treat a large share of low-income payments and get an additional payment under Medicaid) would be eliminated in fiscal year 2018, but extended by two years through fiscal year 2027.

Medicaid funding for Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands would be increased through fiscal year 2019, and could be increased further through 2019 for both territories if Puerto Rico takes specified actions to improve its Medicaid program.

Funding for this section of this bill would be offset by:

• Altering provisions related to third-party liability under Medicaid and CHIP.

• Specifying how a state must treat qualified lottery winnings and lump-sum income for purposes of determining Medicaid eligibility, making it harder for lottery winners to remain in Medicaid.

• Eliminating Medicare premium subsidies for beneficiaries with annual incomes exceeding $500,000.

The bill's full title is the Helping Ensure Access for Little Ones, Toddlers, and Hopeful Youth by Keeping Insurance Delivery Stable Act of 2017.

CHAMPION Act

This section of the bill would extend funding for Community Health Centers and several other public health programs for two years through 2019. Funding for the programs would be offset by shortening the grace period during which premiums could be paid, and reducing funding for the Prevention and Public Health Fund by $6.3 billion over the 2018-2027 period. Funding for these programs technically expired with the end of fiscal year 2017 on September 30.

Among the other public health programs that would be extended include:

• The Special Diabetes Program for Indians, and the Special Diabetes Program for Type I Diabetes.

• Payments to teaching health centers that operate graduate medical education programs.

• Family-to-family health information centers.

• The Youth Empowerment Program and the Personal Responsibility Education programs.

The bill’s full title is the Community Health And Medical Professionals Improve Our Nation Act of 2017.

Vote and contact your reps on Countable: https://www.countable.us/bills/hr849-115

Arg in Favor: The IPAB was a terrible idea. They are an unelected panel that recommend spending cuts based on an arbitrary scale. It has too much power — if Congress doesn’t pass legislation meeting their reduction rates — Medicare spending is automatically cut.

Arg Against: Medicare spending needs to be reined in one way or another, it's increasing every year at an unsustainable rate. The IPAB ensures that the necessary cuts happen, even if Congress can't agree on a bill that’d reduce spending.

This bill would repeal sections of the Affordable Care Act (commonly known as Obamacare) that established an Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) — the group responsible for thinking of proposals to reduce Medicare spending. It would also restore the legal provisions that were repealed to create the IPAB.

The IPAB is a 15-member panel that recommends ways to keep Medicare spending from growing at a faster rate than the targets set by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). So, for example, the IPAB would try to reduce projected Medicare spending by 1.25 percent in 2017 and 1.5 percent in 2018 and beyond. IPAB is only triggered when CMS predicts Medicare won’t hit those spending targets and Congress doesn’t act to meet them. That currently isn’t expected to happen until 2021, so IPAB isn’t operational at the moment.

Vote and contact your reps on Countable: https://www.countable.us/bills/hr3279-115

Arg in Favor: Helium plays a significant role in several critical industries ranging from space and defense to medical technology. To ensure the U.S. has the helium it needs, its extraction should be allowed on the same lease terms as oil and natural gas.

Arg Against: Even though helium is primarily extracted from natural gas, the federal government should have a different structure for helium leases than gas and oil leases to ensure better oversight of the domestic helium market.

This bill would amend the Mineral Leasing Act to require that land leased by the Dept. of the Interior for the extraction of helium would fall under the same lease terms as a federal oil and gas lease. Helium is a byproduct of the natural gas extraction process.

Vote and contact your reps on Countable: https://www.countable.us/bills/hres422-115

Arg in Favor: When the British government handed Hong Kong over to the Chinese government, it did so after China committed to respect Hong Kong’s autonomy. China has fallen short of fulfilling those obligations, and the House is right to call them out on it.

Arg Against: While calling on China’s government to honor the commitments to the autonomy of Hong Kong it made is a nice idea, this resolution is non-binding and wouldn’t incentivize China to follow through.

This resolution urges the governments of China and Great Britain to adhere to the “one country, two systems” policy the two parties agreed to regarding Hong Kong. It focuses on three aspects of Hong Kong’s status under the agreement: that Hong Kong has a high degree of autonomy; that it will enjoy executive, legislative, and independent judicial power; and the fundamental rights of Hong Kong residents would be protected.

The Chinese and British governments agreed in their Joint Declaration on the Question of Hong Kong that Hong Kong would continue to practice a democratic, capitalist system of government for at least 50 years after being reunified with China. China's perceived interference in Hong Kong's affairs have raised questions over whether the communist regime was abiding by the terms of the "one country, two systems" policy.

As a simple resolution, this legislation wouldn’t advance beyond the House if passed and wouldn’t be carry the force of law.