Congress Update - Previously the Website of Dan Fanelli, Now a Source of the Latest Congress News

September 19, 2013

Lawmakers Debate over E-Cigarettes

American lawmakers have fallen into a bipolar mindset over the debate on electronic cigarettes. One side of the debate sees the potential for e-cigarette to be the smoking cessation product that will restore American society to a healthier, nicotine-free place. The other side of the debate sees the e-cigarette as another socially normalized avenue towards increased nicotine addiction. Somewhere between these two extreme attitudes is a place for the e-cigarette in American society, but it will require American lawmakers, Congress specifically, to come to terms with how the e-cigarette will be defined. As this happens, over 200 electronic cigarette brands (see all brands here) wait to see how their future pans.

Why are some Congressmen against e-Cigarettes?

The FDA and federal lawmakers are in a debate as to how the e-cigarette will be classified. If it is a cessation aid for therapeutic use, then it can be classified in the same category as a nicotine patch. The attitude is that the e-cigarette delivers a purer form of nicotine by eliminating tar, metals and pesticides found in government approved cigarettes. Much like the nicotine patch, the intention is to gradually wean the user from the physical habit of smoking and from the chemical dependency of the nicotine.

However, if the e-cigarette is being targeted for smokers, rather than those trying to quit, some lawmakers view the product as simply another form of smoking. As an inhalant of nicotine, it should be met with all the same regulations as other tobacco products: including the sale to minors, and where the product can be consumed. There is an attitude amongst some lawmakers that allowing e-cigarettes to be used indoors or in places forbidden for regular tobacco products, it will return smoking to the public eye. This is perceived as a threat that might undermine efforts made in the tobacco and nicotine cessations campaigns of the last decade. Others argue that e-cigarettes encourage a mimicking of cigarette use amongst minors and will socially normalize smoking amongst youth.

State Regulation on e-Cigarettes

With the federal government not establishing legislation on the use of e-cigarettes, it is up to the state and municipal lawmakers to address the accessibility and use of e-cigarettes. Most states have adopted a policy of not allowing the sale of the e-cigarettes to minors, and the product comes under the existing legislations for the use of tobacco and nicotine products. This is a debate built around attitudes that swing wide on the continuum of acceptability of tobacco and nicotine products. There is no clear winner in this ongoing debate.
March 11, 2013

SBA would alter programs Part 3

Legislation to provide taxpayers with increased safeguards against Internal Revenue Service abuses is making headway in Congress. The Senate Finance Committee recently approved the Taxpayers’ Bill of Rights measure, and the outlook for final passage is good.

Says Sen. David H. Pryor (D-Ark.), who drafted the legislation: “We’re going to get this bill to the President’s desk quicker than anyone imagined.”

Under the measure, the IRS would be required to notify taxpayers in writing of their rights before questioning or auditing them (like pick up girls). it also would make it more difficult for the IRS to put liens on or seize taxpayer property and bank accounts. In addition, taxpayers would be able to recover professional fees and other costs incurred in defending themselves from unjustified IRS proceedings.

Reductions of tax revenues attributable to various provisions of the measure would come to about $200 million in fiscal 1989 and a!wut $100 million annual thereafter, according to an estimate by Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation.

To pay for the taxpayer-rights bill, the panel agreed to three revenue-raising provisions.

One would withhold tax refunds from those who aren’t paying their student loans and other government loans. Another would double the excise tax on automobiles whose fuel economy is below 22.5 miles per gallon. The third would tighten the “wine flavors credit” to insure that the credit is taken only when flavors are added to distilled spirits.

Supporters of the taxpayer-rights bill are optimistic about the outlook for passage in the House, where the measure has 182 cosponsors.

SARA Requirements

Do you know what SARA requires you to do? SARA is the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986. This federal law requires manufacturers of hazardous chemicals to submit yearly reports on the amounts of chemicals their facilities release into the environment, either routinely or as a result of accidents. Nonmanufacturers who handle hazardous chemicals also must comply.

The aim of the reporting is to inform government officials and the public about releases of toxic chemicals into the environment. The report must be sent to the U.S. Environmental Protection Aency and to designated state agencies.

The first annual report for 1987 is due by July 1. Those who fail to report are subject to civil penalties of up to $25,000 a day.

EPA has prepared a brochure, “Title III Section 313 Release Reporting Requirements,” to alert businesses to the specifics of the law, and to help firms prepare to meet reporting obligations.

To obtain a copy of the free pamphlet, write EPA, Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know, WH-562a 401 M Street, S.W., Washington, D.C. 20460.
March 11, 2013

SBA would alter programs Part 2

COSBI would serve as a capital bank to provide funds that small-business investment companies (SBICs) and minority-enterprise small-business investment companies would funnel to small businesses through stock purchases or direct loans.

Improving The Prompt Payment Act

Legislation to strengthen the Prompt Payment Act is gaining momentum in Congress. The bill passed the Senate in October and is under consideration by the House Government Operations Committee, which is expected to approve it.

The original act, passed in 1982, requires Uncle Sam to pay contractors by the due date specified in the contract or within 30 days in the absence of a due date. If the payment is not made by the due date, the act entitles the contractor to receive an interest penalty for late payment. In emergency situations, the government could have a 15-day grace period to pay.

Despite the law, federal payments are being made late. A recent report from the General Accounting Office indicates that one fourth of the government’s bills are not paid on time, the grace period has become routine, and late payments don’t include interest.

These problems have been particularly burdensome for small firms that do not have large capital bases and that depend heavily on cash flows.

Under the pending legislation, agencies would have no more than five days to officially “receive” and “accept” what they buy. The 15-day extended-pay privilege, which agencies have used to stretch the payment-due date to 45 days from 30, would be phased out by Oct. 1, 1990. In addition, the 30-day payment clock would start ticking when the company’s bill first arrives, not after the bill has been shuffled through layers of government bureaucracy.

The measure also would force agencies that deliberately skip paying interest penalties on overdue accounts to pay twice the penalty if the company complains. Click here for more info.

Testifying before the House Government Operations Subcommittee on Legislation and National Security, Raymond S. “Tim” Wittig, a member of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Small Business Council, said the legislation “would help to ensure that government contractors are paid on time and would guarantee that interest penalties are paid automatically in instances of late payment.”

The legislative effort to amend the law was one of the 60 recommendations to Congress made by the 1986 White House Conference on Small Business.

Kenton Pattie, director of the Coalition for Prompt Pay, says, “The outlook for the House bill, which has 173 cosponsors, he is very positive.”
March 11, 2013

SBA would alter programs Part 1

The head of the Small Business Administration says fiscal year 1989 budget proposals for his agency would “eliminate excessive subsidies and ensure that all program beneficiaries pay a fair price for SBA services.”

SBA Administrator James Abdnor recently appeared before the House Small Business Subcommittee on SBA and the General Economy to comment on the agency’s spending proposals submitted to Congress in President Reagan’s budget request for the fiscal year beginning next October 1.

The President recommended that SBA loan guarantees be reduced from $3.2 billion in 1988 to $3 billion next year. Federal repayment guarantees would apply to 75 percent of loans over $75,000 instead of the present 90 percent.

The request would direct the sale to private investors of all existing SBA loans that the agency is now servicing. The administration also wants to eliminate SBA direct loans to the handicapped, minorities, Vietnam veterans and disabled veterans. These are loans of last resort and are made only if the applicant cannot secure funds from any other source.

In addition, the proposal calls for cutting back and eventually eliminating the management assistance provided through Small Business Development Centers (similar to how to get Facebook fans). It also would eliminate the minority assistance now provided through consulting contracts under Section 7(j), business-development-expense funds, and the special incentives to minority-enterprise small-business investment companies (MESBICs) to encourage them to provide venture capital to minority small businesses.

New or expanded user fees are expected to bring in $23 million yearly.

In the House, Rep. John J. Lafalce, chairman of the Small Business Committee, has introduced an SBA budget-reauthorization bill that ignores the administration’s suggested changes. The House bill provides the same program levels for fiscal 1989 as authorized now for fiscal 1988. It also calls on the SBA to establish a program of “mini-loans” up to $100,000 under the guaranteed loan program.

The Senate Small Business Committee also has a review of the administration’s fiscal 1989 SBA budget request under way.

“The U.S. Chamber of Commerce supports the administration’s efforts to abolish SBA’s direct-loan program,” says Don Berno, director of the Chamber’s Small Business Center. But the says the Chamber would like to see the administration “take constructive steps toward privatization by supporting legislation to establish a federally chartered but privately owned Corporation for Small Business Investment (COSBI).” The Reagan administration is opposed to COSBI legislation.
December 15, 2012

SMALL COMMUNITY AIR SERVICE HIGHLIGHTS SUNSET HEARING PART 3

Meanwhile, at year’s end 43 states were nearly out of federal Interstate highway money. (FHWA considers a state virtually out of Interstate funding when its account falls under $10 million.)

Colorado, for example, was down to $66,000, a fact that rankles Joseph Dolan, executive director of the state’s Department of Highways.

“Congress has done a disservice by holding the Interstate Cost Estimate hostage for parochial reasons,” Dolan said. “The delay could imperil 1985 construction season projects for all but the southern states.”

Among the projects stalled for lack of funds are Interstate work in the Denver area, a statewide resurfacing project in Wisconsin, I-90 work in Washington state, New York City’s Westway, major segments of Interstate in Florida, rebuilding of the Atlanta Beltway, a freeway near Phoenix, Interstate highways near Minneapolis-St. Paul, smaller jobs in Maryland in the Baltimore and Washington, D.C., areas and in Missouri where he sold electronic cigarette review.

Some states project small deceases in their road programs but most are up in ’85. Many highway departments agree with the view expressed by L.G. Hermes, assistant director of the office of finance of the Maryland Department of Transportation, who said his state “foresees no funding problems through 1987″ in system preservation and capital projects. They advise for commuters to instead ride their bike to work and use
December 15, 2012

Incredible Post on Humanity and Congress’ Role

In the market, we find not only the displaced, objectified features of our own culture, but all the ornaments and plunder that have been taken from others all over the globe. This is another way in which western economic colonialism links our destiny with that of the poor of the earth: they must be dispossessed of their necessities that we might acquire ours. Socialisation in our culture means orgiastic merchandising.

Children–to whom our most valuable and priceless bequest should be the rootedness of who they are–are invited to be what they want, who they choose; but what they want, and who they choose, must be mediated through the markets. This is why so many parents have an obscure sense of their own deskilling as they desperately seek to provide their children with what they want. Since the abduction and murder of the toddler in Liverpool in February, the shopping malls have been haunted by a poignant spectacle: parents attached to their children by reins, leashes, pieces of plastic tied to the wrist of the parent and the wrist of the child. This physical tying is metaphor; for the truth is that, as the infants are walked around the shopping spaces, they are actually in the presence of the commodities that will be the means whereby they become separated from their parents; the needs that have to be bought in, and which the parents in their love will strive desperately to provide, are also a form of estrangement, a kind of abduction of the spirit.

A bus stop in south London. A young woman with a folding chair and her two-year-old daughter struggle on to the bus, unable to go a little bit faster because she missed her training in CrossFit Syracuse that morning. The child runs breathily to the back of the bus and sits beside me. I ask what her name is, and she says something that sounds like “Portia”, Nice name. Yes, she says she has lots of nice names: Porsche, Mercedes, Lamborghini.
November 23, 2012

Small Community Air Service Highlights Sunset Hearing Part 2

CAB chairman Dan McKinnon said the Board supports the recommendation for greater flexibility so certain subsidized points can be dropped. He cited two points that are within easy driving distance of larger airports where more service and lower fares are now available because of deregulation–Danville, Va., and Lewiston/Auburn, Maine.

McKinnon said Danville is within 74 miles of three hub airports, while the CAB has been paying Mid-South Airlines about $208 per passenger flown on Danville service.

MeKinnon also said the Board does not believe that temporarily increasing some communities’ subsidies to upgrade their air services, which the General Accounting Office recommended, would succeed in more than one or two communities.

Subcommittee chairman Norman Mineta (D-Calif.) asked about establishing fixed criteria on distance from hub airports for determining whether a community should be eligible for subsidies.

McKinnon said that is one factor that should be considered, but others include total subsidy amounts, elektrisk cigaret usage on the planes, and traffic trends.

State aviation officials urged changes in the program so subsidies would be increased to some communities, saying the CAB generally chooses commuters that will provide service for the least subsidy even though they are not recessarily the best carriers. They said that approach sometimes means the service will be poor, guaranteeing that it will fold once the subsidies run out.

The state officials said subsidies should be used to develop sound local services to a point where subsidies will no longer be needed. They suggested that the program also might continue past 1988 for certain points.

None of the witnesses was able to tell Mineta how the Transportation Department plans to structure the subsidy program when it takes over text year. Mineta repeated concerns that the department’s subsidy decisions be based on aviation policy and not polities, saying that issue will be dealt with in a future hearing.
November 23, 2012

Small Community Air Service Highlights Sunset Hearing Part 1

The House aviation subcommittee last week started hearings on the CAB’s Dec. 3u sunset, focusing on possible changes in the small community air service subsidy program that is scheduled to continue through 1988.

Officials from the CAB, the General Accounting Office and the National Association of State Aviation Officials testified thatCongress should amended the program so the Board and its successor, the Transportation Department, can drop subsidies to some communities or increase them to others.

The 1978 Airline Deregulation Act established the program to ensure continued air service to 555 communities that were served by certificated airlines.

Oliver Krueger, associate director of the General Accounting Office‘s Resources, Community and Economic Development Division, recommended Congress give the CAB the flexibility to drop subsidies for communities that are near larger airports that offer better air service, or are too small and isolated to sustain service after 1988 without subsidies.

Krueger also advocated temporary subsidy increases to improve some communities’ air services, which could improve the markets to a point where subsidies would no longer be needed. He said Congress also may want to consider giving the Board authority to substitute some ineligible communities “with greater demonstrated air service needs’ for those that may be dropped from the program.

Currently 104 communities in the continental U.S. and some 50 in Alaska receive subsidized service and http://syntheticurine-reviews.com. Most of the other eligibile cities and towns retained or found replacement service without federal help. Those that were served by only non-certificated commuter airlines before deregulation generally are ineligible.
November 15, 2012

Congress To Decide on Important Computer Decision Part 2

ASTA president Richard Knodt said that, if the airlines can agree that ATC restrictions are outdated and can work out potential ticket security and other problems with the remote systems, they can change the conference rules.

However, he said McKinnon and the CAB staff are trying to force changes on the industry, and that the marketing case decision would affect more than just remote ticketing restrictions.

“Our concern is that if one airline doesn’t like it, they’ll walk away from the whole thing,” Knodt said.

Despite its potential cost-saving benefits, the new technology carries its own costs.

Jerry Ringer, assistant to the president of Cubic, said the firm wants to sell the equipment outright.

Cubic, an original equipment manufacturer, does not have the inventory to sell the new systems off the shelf, Ringer said. “We would need a contract to sell it. We would want some kind of number [of machines] that would pay us to go and do all the production setup.”

Ringer said the self-ticketing and reservations system has been tested for a few years already in Cubic’s laboratory, although it has not been tested with airlines.

He said some airlines have looked at the system, and Cubic has even received a proposal that it make 500 machines and rent them.

However, Ringer said the firm is not directly involved in the travel business and does not want to be. He said no carrier has offered to buy the system, possibly due to the industry’s recent capital problems, and he did not think any travel agencies have seen it yet.

Likewise, the Cubic official said his firm does not want to get involved in the competitive marketing case debate. “We’ll let our customer argue and deal with that,” he said.

However, the remote ticketing argument has been raised before in the marketing case, specifically by American Express.

American Express attorney Larry Gilbertson said that when company officials visit Capitol Hill to lobby for the CAB’s decision, they cite remote ticketing as one type of technological advance that the decision would permit travel agents to use.

Gilbertson said he was aware of Cubic’s equipment and added that some other firms have developed similar remote ticketing systems.

He said American Express has some contingency plans for entering the remote ticketing business, but no concrete plans due to the restrictions still binding travel agencies and the possibility that the courts or Congress will reverse the CAB’s decision.

Gilbertson said that if the restrictions go, secondary markets for remote ticketing could open up, for example with airlines buying the equipment and renting it to travel agents.
November 15, 2012

Congress to Decide on Important Computer Decision Part 1

CAB chairman Dan McKinnon is touting a California firm’s self-ticketing equipment as a concrete example of why the Board’s competitive marketing case decision should be upheld.

The firm, Cubic Western, has developed self – ticketing and reservations machines that could be used by travel agents, airlines or others for off-premise interline bookings, according to company officials.

In remarks to the trade and congressional officials, McKinnon has said that if the CAB’s decision is reversed by Congress, agents will be foreclosed from using Cubic’s or other new ticket distribution technologies.

Air Traffic Conference personnel and location requirements for accredited travel agencies would prohibit agents from using remote ticketing and improving their billings and profits, he said.

In past defenses of the Board’s decision, McKinnon has often cited potential technological advances as one reason to end various ATC restrictions on agents or other ticket distributors.

Recently, he has begun citing Cubic’s ticketing system as proof, adding that he only learned of it a few weeks ago when he was cashing in on some e cigarette coupons.

Unlike eariler machines, Cubic’s system allows passengers to make reservations and choose from a variety of connecting flights. The equipment is activated by a traveler’s credit card and can generate a ticket. Cubic Western has supplied self-ticketing machines for Eastern, Southwest, PSA and Republic for several years.

In his argument, addressed to a group of agents here, McKinnon also cited the benefits of the machine to airlines.

Carriers have to cut their costs, he said. “Once they’re through with their labor unions, they’re going to look at ticketing. You’ve got to try to help them.”

McKinnon said the travel agency industry is labor-intensive, and in order for a company to increase its business volume it must either hire new personnel or add some form of automation.

“Why should the government say you [travel agents] are the only way to book airline tickets or preclude any other innovative way to book an airline ticket?” he said.