{"id":94,"date":"2017-01-31T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-01-31T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/calchurches.planetpov.com\/impact\/index.php\/2017\/01\/31\/confirmation-hearing-schedules-and-our-impact-on-them\/"},"modified":"2017-01-31T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2017-01-31T00:00:00","slug":"confirmation-hearing-schedules-and-our-impact-on-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/churchimpact.org\/index.php\/2017\/01\/31\/confirmation-hearing-schedules-and-our-impact-on-them\/","title":{"rendered":"Confirmation Hearing Schedules and Our IMPACT on Them"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t<\/span>\"Picture\"<\/a><\/span><\/span> <\/p>\n

Dear Friends:<\/span>\u200b<\/p>\n

<\/span>Confirmation hearings on the new Administration’s Cabinet choices are continuing.\u00a0 Senate Judiciary will vote tomorrow on the proposed Attorney General, Jeff Session.\u00a0 We’ve been asking you to call your Senators on this and upcoming floor votes, even when we think your Senator will probably vote NO. In part it is to give Senators who are in agreement with us the “weight” of citizen response, and in part because even those on our side are getting pushed by supporters to vote Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>Dianne Feinstein of California indicated she’d had far too few calls concerning Mr. Sessions and might, therefore, have to vote for him.\u00a0 Now, after she was inundated by your calls, those from the NAACP, and many other human rights groups, she has asked for a delay in the vote because Mr. Sessions has failed to answer questions posed to him before the hearings began.\u00a0 She has been strengthened by your response.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>Please understand that whatever an elected official’s own beliefs about any given issue, if there is no real\u00a0citizen support for that position within\u00a0his or her\u00a0constituency, it makes holding the line on the vote very, very difficult.\u00a0 That’s why we encourage your voices to be raised.\u00a0 Your voice has “weight” in every serious matter.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>The reason we don’t suggest that you call the chair or ranking member of a committee at the federal leve is that if you are not a constituent and the person in that position is not interested in higher office, the voices outside their constituency (district or state) hold very little influence if any.\u00a0 You may, of course, do it, but it expends your energies for little return.\u00a0 So we focus on your representatives.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>The upcoming hearings are as follows:<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>Senator Tom Price <\/strong>for Health and Human Services.\u00a0 He has repeatdly advocated overturning the Affordable Care Act and has proffered outright lies about how it is working.\u00a0 He is deeply opposed to women making their own decisions about their reproductive care including access to birth control and abortion. He also has ignored the existing laws (the Hyde Amendment of long standing) \u00a0that prevent federal funds being used to pay for abortion and pretends they still do, using that as an excuse to remove access to Planned Parenthood and other women’s health services.\u00a0 Moreover, he supports the general conservative goal of ending – yes ending – Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Veternas Tricare, and VA health care by privatizing them or turning them into tax credits.\u00a0 None of those strategies would offer the care we have today, not for our elders, not for the poor, not for veterans.\u00a0 He faced a second committee hearing due to undisclosed financial interests in major pharmaceutical corporations among other issues. He has a likely smooth passage through a floor vote, but we need to keep up the opposition to his leadership of these key issues.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>Senate Committe on Health, Education,\u00a0Labor and Pensions (HELP)\u00a0will hear the second round of questions for Betsy DeVos<\/strong>, candidate for Secretary of Education.\u00a0The hearing is scheduled for Thursday, February 2.\u00a0 \u00a0Ms. DeVos, wife of the Amway products founder, is a rabid opponent of public schools and is in favor of using tax dollars\u00a0 – our money – for private schools both secular and religious.\u00a0 She has never shown an ounce of understanding of what public schools need; her family have all been schooled privately, and she has a strong conservative religious agenda she wishes to have implemented in both those charter schools and public schools regardless of parents’ and children’s beliefs.\u00a0 She once advocated making poor children work, saying even jobs in mining would be good.\u00a0 Shades of the 1890s!\u00a0 She showed in the first round of questioning that she has no interest in or understanding of curricula or child development or what constitutes real achievement.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>Senate HELP Committee has schedule February 2 to question fast-food CEO Andrew Puzder <\/strong>in his quest for Secretary of Labor.\u00a0 Mr. Puzder has expressed opposition to not only the “Fight for $15” minimum wage movement but to minimum wage. His own fast-food empire, CKE Restaurants (Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s) is a chronic violator of basic labor standards. He expressed an interest in purusing automation to replace workers not help them do better.\u00a0 He wants to remove all liability on both his corporation and its franchise owners for harm done to workers – a standard even Andrew Carnegie rejected.\u00a0 And he wants to make union organizing very difficult if not impossible to further these anti-worker goals.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>No matter who is now up before committee or who has passed to floor votes, please let your Senators know of your opposition.\u00a0 Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross <\/strong>was CEO of the company that ignored federal safety standards resulting in the deaths of 12 miners at his Sago Coal Mine. He operates most of his businesses outside the U.S. and has strong and dubious ties to Russian interests.\u00a0 Mick Mulvaney, <\/strong>candidate for Director of the Office of Managment and Budget was one of the legislators shutting down the government in 23 and 2015.\u00a0 Steven Mnuchin<\/strong>, candidate for Secretary of the Treasury, played a pivotal role in the financial crisis of 2007-08 while he was head of the branch that promoted toxic mortgages.\u00a0 He was called the foreclosure king of Wall Street, once trying to take back the home of a 90-year-old woman over a $.29 calculation error.\u00a0 He withheld payments to survivors of Hurricane Sandy. He has no government experience so tends to view the federal finances for what benefits corporate interests, not the public.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>With all of these candidates whose moral values are, in our view, sadly lacking and whose experience has never been in the public interest, we urge constant vigilance and strong opposition.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>To call your Senators please dial 202-224-3121\u00a0 <\/strong>or connect to them for district phones and FAX or email contact at:<\/span>
<\/span>http:\/\/www.churchimpact.org\/take-action.html<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>These people will have a great deal of say over our future, how we live,\u00a0 what benefits we will receive and how, whether we may operate freely or be constrained by unknown limitations.\u00a0 This is on all of us to oppose. Make your voice heard today, tomorrow, through the confirmation floor votes so that you send the message that we will NOT go back to an insecure time when corporations rule, and we suffer.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>Thank you.<\/span>
<\/span><\/div>\n

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Dear Friends:\u200b Confirmation hearings on the new Administration’s Cabinet choices are continuing.\u00a0 Senate Judiciary will vote tomorrow on the proposed Attorney General, Jeff Session.\u00a0 We’ve … Read More ›<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/churchimpact.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/churchimpact.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/churchimpact.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/churchimpact.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/churchimpact.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/churchimpact.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/churchimpact.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/churchimpact.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/churchimpact.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}