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Congressional Climate Bill Tracking
H.R. 255 – Next Generation American Manufacturing Act of 2015
S. 177 – Data Security and Breach Notification Act of 2015
H.R. 522 – Commission on the Accountability and Review of Federal Agencies
H.R. 612 – To preserve and protect the free choice of individual employees to form, join, or assist labor organizations, or to refrain from such activities.
H.R. 467 – STEM Opportunities Act of 2015
S. 191 – Educating Tomorrow’s Workforce Act of 2015
S. 108 – Financial Aid Simplification and Transparency Act of 2015
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Video of the Day
Stars and Stripes Fly Over U.S. Embassy in Havana After 54 Years
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Today’s Hill Action
Senate Floor Schedule
The Senate is not in session today.
Committee Hearings
There are no committee hearings scheduled today.
House Floor Schedule
The House is not in session today.
Committee Hearings
There are no committee hearings scheduled today.
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Can a Federal Prisoner Be Too Old to Jail?
When you’re locked in federal prison, how old do you have to be to count as “aging”?
That’s the question two federal agencies are grappling over, and the answer they
pick will determine how the government spends more than $800 million in public
funding for prisons. And for tens of thousands of federal inmates, it could mean
the difference between becoming eligible for a late-life release program and spending
their twilight years behind bars.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons is struggling to adjust to an aging prison population,
a product, in part, of criminal-justice reforms of the late 1980s that dramatically
reduced federal parole and imposed mandatory minimum sentences for some offenses.
In fiscal 2013, the Federal Bureau of Prisons spent nearly 20 percent of its $6.9
billion budget to incarcerate inmates aged 50 and older. And without a policy intervention,
those costs are set to rise: Inmates aged 50 and older make up the fastest-growing
segment of the prison population, according to Justice Department Inspector General
Michael Horowitz.
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Senators: Metro Safety Important Enough to Micro-Manage
The four senators from the states that surround Washington, D.C., say Metro’s board
of directors needs to move more quickly to protect riders from the system’s aging
rail infrastructure.
The latest statement from Democratic Sens. Barbara A. Mikulski and Benjamin L. Cardin
of Maryland and Tim Kaine and Mark Warner of Virginia comes after Metro revealed
that the track alignment issue at the Smithsonian Metro Station was known to Metro
officials well before a derailment last week, a track gauge issue they apparently
opted to ignore.
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Meet the overtime elite
When President Barack Obama unveiled his overtime proposal in June, he presented
it as a boon for an overburdened middle class, warning that “too many Americans
are working long days for less pay than they deserve.” Five million of those struggling
workers, he said, would now qualify for overtime pay.
But a tiny percentage of those workers may not exactly be struggling: 36,000 are
white-collar workers who earn more than $100,000 a year.
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Until tomorrow,
Lobbyit.com
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