Week Ending May 25, 2018

Congress will be in recess until the week of June 4. Our next Federal Legislative Report will be on June 8.

• Federal Employees’ Workplace Rights Weakened by President Trump’s New Executive Orders
• Unions Matter to Congress
• Harmful Farm Bill Faces Re-vote
• House Spending Bills Advance
• House Panel Approves TANF Reauthorization
• House Passes Bill Weakening Consumer Banking Protections
• Water Infrastructure Bills Moving
• House GOP Leaders Grapple With DACA
• Senate Passes VA Privatization Bill

Federal Employees’ Workplace Rights Weakened by President Trump’s New Executive Orders

Late Friday, on the eve of Memorial Day weekend, President Trump issued three new executive orders that weaken federal employees’ workplace protections. President Trump’s Office of Management and Budget and Office of Personnel Management released several new policies that would restrict federal employees’ use of official time, make it easier to fire federal employees, and require federal agencies to negotiate union contracts that reduce costs (e.g. worker wages and benefits).

AFSCME President Saunders issued the following statement:

“It is shameful that this administration continues to undermine the important services and vital contributions our federal workers provide to the American people every single day. These workers protect our national security and ensure that our communities run smoothly. For their service they deserve respect, not a constant barrage of attacks on their freedom to join together in strong unions and speak up together to deliver better services.”

Unions Matter to Congress

Working closely with AFSCME, several members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) took to the House floor in defense of unions and in support of public sector workers’ freedom to negotiate. Members talked about the threats posed to collective bargaining rights by Janus v. AFSCME Council 31. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) said it well: “Collective action raises the standard of living for everyone…Unions matter so much because unions are what allow ordinary Americans to get the wages they deserve.”

What you need to know: Workers who join unions across this nation value being able to come together to lift benefits and wages, and ensure safe working conditions – and not just for union members. Unions ensure working Americans can support their families and are treated fairly by their employers. AFSCME Federal Government Affairs continues to work closely with members in Congress to amplify our message that strong unions build strong families and stronger communities.

Harmful Farm Bill Faces Re-Vote

Following last week’s surprise rejection of H.R.2, the House of Representatives’ farm bill, Republican leadership has been scrambling to set up a re-vote by June 22. Floor amendments made the bill even more harsh by making it more difficult to get food assistance, cutting the meager training investments, and eliminating the longstanding requirement for merit staff employees to conduct eligibility determination. The bill had already cut $17 billion in food assistance from SNAP (formerly known as food stamps), taking this basic need away from one million families and two million individuals including seniors, veterans, single mothers with children, people with disabilities, low-wage workers and other individuals. The bill imposes new harsh employment requirements and diverts resources for food to underfunded, new training programs and removes state flexibility. It would add pressure on states to privatize job training and employment services in addition to SNAP eligibility.

What You Need to Know: AFSCME strongly opposes these extreme changes to SNAP in H.R. 2, especially privatization efforts that failed previously in states like Texas and Indiana. The Senate has now announced plans to work on its own bill in June. We are advocating for the defeat of the House bill and to ensure that the Senate bill will not include harmful work requirements, cuts in SNAP or privatization.

House Spending Bills Advance

The House Appropriations Committee has passed half of the 12 annual spending bills. A critical component of the annual process is to make official allocations for each bill. The allocations revealed this week unfairly distribute the funding among competing accounts. The bill funding labor, health, human services and education programs (Labor-HHS) received no increase, even though it is the largest of the domestic spending bills. Financial Services and Interior Environment were also passed over for increases in favor of Homeland Security, Military Construction-VA, and Energy-Water. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) said “this is really outrageous” and “states are going to lose a lot of funding.”

The Senate Appropriations Committee has been working on a more bipartisan process and made fairer allocations, including increasing Labor-HHS by $2 billion. AFSCME strongly supports allocations to provide adequate increases in public services and strongly opposes the House’s unfair actions.

What you need to know: This week, one of the bills passed by the House committee included funds for public housing for fiscal year (FY) 2019. The Public Housing Capital Fund was flat-funded at $2.75 billion and the Public Housing Operating Fund was flat-funded at $4.55 billion. While this funding exceeds levels of the last few years, it is significantly below operating costs and does not reduce the more than $30 billion public housing modernization backlog. This federal funding to operate public housing is typically the only source of funding for AFSCME members working at Public Housing Authorities. Despite President Trump’s request for $100 million, no funding was provided for the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD), which facilitates voluntary permanent conversion of public housing to the Section 8 housing program.

The House Transportation and HUD bill makes substantive changes to transportation infrastructure grant programs. The spending bill cuts in half the Obama-era Tiger grants program from $1.5 billion to $750 million, and requires rural areas get a fair share. Additionally, despite providing $13.6 billion in total budgetary resources for the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) – $141 million above the FY 2018 enacted level and $2.5 billion above the request, the bill lowers the federal share for New Start Transit grants from 80 to 50 percent, substantially increasing the burden on states to come up with more funding.

House Panel Approves TANF Reauthorization

With a vote along party lines, the House Ways and Means Committee approved the Jobs and Opportunity with “Benefits and Services for Success Act” (H.R. 5861), which would reauthorize the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program.

What you need to know: The bill does not address the fundamental issues in the TANF program. It is a block grant to states that does not respond to recessions or unemployment rates. The bill compounds this flaw by adding no new money for states. The TANF block grant has been funded at the same level since 1996 and has lost almost 40 percent of its value due to inflation, even as the number of poor children remains roughly unchanged. The bill also increases states’ administrative burdens without additional funds or needed flexibility to help families access the supports they need to return to the workforce.

House Passes Bill Weakening Consumer Banking Protections

The House of Representatives approved financial reform legislation (S. 2155), which weakens protections safeguarding America’s financial system from risky banking practices and consumer protections safeguarding student loan borrowers and home buyers. The bill loosens government oversight on huge banks and non-banks (e.g. risky hedge funds) with assets of $50 billion to $250 billion, which includes 25 of America’s 38 largest banks. On May 24, President Trump signed this legislation into law. The House voted 258-159 along party lines to approve the bill, with only one Republican opposing it. Only 33 House Democrats voted for the bill and 158 voted against it. Click HERE for AFSCME’s letter of opposition.

What you need to know: The law will limit loan opportunities for homebuyers, reduce their affordable borrowing, and increase banks’ discriminatory lending and loan decisions, which disproportionately harm people of color and historically underserved communities. It will increase costs to families who borrowed college tuition with private student loans. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) previously reported this bill would increase the probability “a systemically important financial institution (SIFI) will fail or that there will be a financial crisis,” which would likely harm working families by increasing layoffs and unemployment rates, significantly reducing retirement saving, and potentially forcing taxpayers to again bail out failed banks. The law will increase financial problems from speculative investments, overleveraged lending, and outright fraud and criminal activities. These protections had been enacted in 2010 as part of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, in response to the 2008 financial crisis and the resulting global recession. These protections have succeeded, stabilized our economy in troubled times, and safeguarded working families.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said, “It opens the door to lending discrimination, and it potentially threatens the stability of our financial system and our economy. The bill would take us back to the days when unchecked recklessness on Wall Street ignited an historic financial meltdown. Wall Street gambled with the livelihood of consumers and then it was the middle class that lost its shirt.”

Water Infrastructure Bills Moving

This week, panels in the House and Senate prepared legislation (H.R. 8 in the House, and S. 2800 in the Senate) to renew water infrastructure programs for another two years under the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA). Congress uses the biennial WRDA process to prioritize investments in vital water infrastructure including ports, inland waterways, dams, flood protection, drinking and wastewater. Passing WRDA legislation this year will ensure that essential funding gets out to states and localities through State Revolving Funds.

Because WRDA is considered must-pass legislation, industry lobbyists and corporate privateers hoped to use this year’s process to open up water systems for takeover by private interests. The Trump administration’s transportation “Infrastructure Plan” was similarly constructed to remove the federal government’s interest in the nation’s water systems. As that effort failed, corporate lobbyists attempted to slip similar language into the Senate’s WRDA legislation.

What you need to know: AFSCME worked with water and public interest allies to block harmful privatization language from making it into the legislation. Lawmakers also rejected proposals to cut funding for state revolving funds for drinking water and wastewater, which are often targeted for “innovative financing” (privatization) schemes. Meanwhile, AFSCME worked with the offices of Reps. Keith Ellison (D-MN) and Ro Khanna (D-CA) to introduce an alternative “Water Affordability, Transparency, Equity and Reliability (WATER) Act.” This legislation would make water service safer, more affordable and more accessible in the U.S. by providing $35 billion a year to improve drinking water and wastewater service.

House GOP Leaders Grapple With DACA

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) has all but lost control of his caucus as the GOP is starkly divided on immigration politics and the future of immigrants under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). Thirty far-right conservatives have already blocked nonrelated legislation in a move to thwart action on any DACA solution. GOP moderates filed a discharge petition on May 9 asking for a vote on up to five separate pieces of immigration-related legislation. To be successful, all Democrats and at least 25 Republicans would need to sign on. So far, 23 Republicans have signed the petition and all but a handful of Democrats.

What You Need to Know: The DACA debate will continue to command attention in the Congress as factions within the GOP and White House remain far apart on a solution.

Senate Passes VA Privatization Bill

By a vote of 92 to 5 the Senate passed the VA MISSION Act (S. 2372), which had already passed the House. President Trump is expected to sign this legislation into law within days. Although the bill contains important provisions that AFSCME supports, we opposed the overall bill because of the harm it would do to publicly provided health care for veterans.

What you need to know: The bill allows the Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to privatize veterans’ health care and dismantle or close many of the 170 VA medical centers and 1,061 clinics across the nation. The privatizing of veterans’ health care would be a radical change in the nationwide VA health care system, allowing a move to publicly provide veterans’ health care.

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