Congressional Climate

Table of Contents

GANG OF FIVE DISCUSSING PLANS WITH OTHER COLLEAGUES

PETER KING ANNOUNCES 2ND MUSLIM HEARING

GIFFORDS STILL CAN'T TALK

Congressional
Climate Bill Tracking

H.R.658 - FAA Reauthorization and Reform Act of 2011

H.R.164 - Damaged Vehicle Information Act

H.R.514 - FISA Sunsets Extension Act of 2011

H.R.1 - Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2011

H.R.4 - Small Business Paperwork Mandate Elimination Act of 2011

H.R.96 - Internet Freedom Act

H.R.605 - Patients' Freedom to Choose Act

S.244 - State Health Care Choice Act

Video Of The Day

More than 1,000 Syrians flee into Turkey

Greetings!

Please enjoy today's issue of the Congressional Climate newsletter, brought to you by Lobbyit.com!

Today's Hill Action:

THE SENATE:

The Senate will meet at 2:00 p.m. for morning business.

SENATE COMMITTEES:

Senate Armed Services (10:00 a.m.): Closed briefing on the situation in Libya and Operation Unified Protector. SVC-217.

THE HOUSE:

No meeting scheduled for today.

HOUSE COMMITTEES:

No meetings scheduled for today.

'Gang of Five' opens talks to colleagues

After months of keeping their work secret, the remaining members of the Senate Gang of Six have opened up their negotiations to a broader group of Democratic and Republican colleagues.

About 18 senators, an even mix from both parties, met in Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin's (Ill.) office Thursday to build support for the Gang of Six's unfinished work.

Sen. Saxby Chambliss (Ga.), a Republican member of the Gang of Six, said at an Economic Club of D.C. event this week that the group had neared agreement on $4.7 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years.

Members of the gang were very close to an agreement, according to Democratic negotiators, until Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) pulled out of the group.

The remaining Republican members, Chambliss and Sen. Mike Crapo (Idaho), say they will not strike a final deal in Coburn's absence.

Durbin and Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) the Democratic members of the group are now trying to build broader bipartisan support around what the gang negotiated so far.

The lawmakers invited colleagues who signed a letter in March calling on President Obama to take the lead in comprehensive deficit reduction measures.

"My purpose is to make sure as many senators who urged us on, the 64 who signed the letter, have a chance to find out where we are, and give a sense of the package as it was developed. It's not completed but how far we've gotten and what the elements are," Conrad said.

The 32 Democrats and 32 Republicans who signed the letter asked Obama to lead a broad discussion on spending cuts, entitlement changes and tax reform.

Sen. Mike Johanns (Neb.), who organized the letter to Obama, attended the meeting in Durbin's office. So did Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.).

"We've reached a natural point at which it seemed like the next natural step is to share what we've been doing with other members," Conrad said.

Conrad said it made sense for the remaining members of the gang to share their work because they were very close to reaching a conclusion.

Conrad, Durbin and Sen. Mark Warner (Va.), the third Democrat in the gang, are not looking replace Coburn, however. They hope he may rejoin their talks.

Lawmaker announces second hearing into Muslim-American radicalization

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) on Thursday announced the second in the House Homeland Security Committee's series of hearings on radicalization within the American-Muslim community.

The hearing, entitled "The Threat of Muslim-American Radicalization in U.S. Prisons" is slated for next Wednesday and is expected to focus closely on the Muslim population incarcerated in prisons throughout the country.

"We have seen cases in which inmates have been radicalized at the hands of already locked-up terrorists or by extremist imam chaplains," said King in a statement.

"We will focus on a number of the serious cases in which radicalized current and former inmates have planned and launched attacks or attempted to join overseas Islamic terrorist organizations."

King caused a public furor in March with his first hearing on the issue of radicalization, as nearly 100 of his Democratic House colleagues pleaded with him to cancel it. Critics of the hearing held that it would create further division between Muslim-Americans and government officials, including law enforcement agencies.

King called the hearing a success and said that it proved to be "informative and educational." King had said all along that his intent was to spur a more vigorous conversation within the Muslim-Americans about ways in which it could better help to thwart radicalization efforts within their community.

King received full backing from his leaders to address the issue, he said. And the 10-term lawmaker said he never wavered from his plan to hold the hearing, even in the face of a stream of threatening phone calls, some from overseas

An L.A. County sheriff testified, along with the father of an accused terrorist, an uncle of another accused terrorist and the president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy. The first Muslim elected to Congress, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), also testified and at one point broke into tears as he discussed an American-Muslim man who helped save people in and around the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

King's staff has not finalized the witness list for next Wednesday's hearing, but the lawmaker said, "We will hear testimony from both U.S. and international experts on the issue and from those intimately involved in recent prison radicalization cases."

Aide: Gabrielle Giffords struggles to communicate

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is communicating through facial expressions and gestures, but is unable to speak in complete sentences, her chief of staff told The Arizona Republic in a rare discussion of the Arizona Democrat's condition.

Five months after Giffords, 41, was shot in the head outside a Tucson supermarket, chief of staff Pia Carusone said the third-term congresswoman is not close to being healthy enough to return to Congress and said the only timetable for determining if she'll seek re-election is Arizona's May 2012 filing deadline.

"Short of that, we'd love to know today what her life will be, what her quality of life will be, which will determine whether she'll be able to run for office and all sorts of other things involving her life. But we just don't know yet," Carusone told the paper.

Federal Judge John Roll, Giffords aide Gabriel Zimmerman and four others were killed and 13 wounded in the Jan. 8 shooting, for which Jared Loughner, 22, has been charged with 49 felony counts. A federal judge ruled last month that Loughner is too mentally ill to stand trial.

Carusone said Giffords struggles to speak.

"We do a lot of inferring with her because her communication skills have been impacted the most," Carusone said. "If you think of it as someone who is able to communicate with you clearly, it is easy to test them. You can ask them a series of questions, and you can get clear answers back. Whereas with Gabby, what we've been able to infer and what we believe is that her comprehension is very good. I don't know about percentage-wise or not, but it's close to normal, if not normal."

Carusone said Gifford relies on nonverbal means of communicating.

"She is borrowing upon other ways of communicating," Carusone said. "Her words are back more and more now, but she's still using facial expressions as a way to express. Pointing. Gesturing. Add it all together, and she's able to express the basics of what she wants or needs. But, when it comes to a bigger and more complex thought that requires words, that's where she's had the trouble."

Doctors have been unable to determine the full extent of the damage done to Giffords's brain, Carusone said, because bullet shards lodged in her brain prevent her from undergoing an MRI examination.

Carusone said doctors remain optimistic about Giffords's progress, but warned that her condition is now far from her normal condition before the shooting.

"She's living. She's alive," Carusone said. "But if she were to plateau today, and this was as far as she gets, it would not be nearly the quality of life she had before. There's no comparison. All that we can hope for is that she won't plateau today and that she'll keep going and that when she does plateau, it will be at a place far away from here."

Until tomorrow,

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