The House Democratic Caucus officially selected Norm Dicks (D-WA) to become chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee yesterday, filling the vacancy left by John P. Murtha who passed away in February. Congressman James Moran (D-VA) will replace Norm Dicks as chairman of the Interior-Environment Appropriations Subcommittee. Congressman Dicks will remain a member of the Interior Appropriations subcommittee. In the coming days there will be an appointment of a new member to the full Appropriations Committee to fill Congressman Murtha’s seat, as well as some shuffling of Appropriations subcommittee assignments.
Month: March 2010
This Week on Capitol Hill, March 8-12
Action on the Floor
This week the Senate continues consideration of a bill to extend expired tax provisions, unemployment insurance, flood insurance, and COBRA health care subsidies.
On Tuesday the House will consider a number of minor commemorative resolutions. Later in the week, they will consider measures to encourage debt relief for Haiti, to expedite tax breaks for eqrthquake relief in Chile, and to set a timeline for withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan. the house is also expencted to vote to impeach Judge G. Thomas Porteous Jr.
Hearing Highlights
- Tuesday: The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions will hold a hearing on reauthorizing the “No Child Left Behind” education law.
- Wednesday: Senate Foreign Relations will hole a hearing on global health programs with philanthropist Bill Gates.
Source: CQ Today
Health Insurance and Student Aid Overhauls Likely Headed for Reconciliation
Yesterday, during a speech at the White House, President Obama called on Congress to give health care reform an up or down vote before the Easter congressional recess -beginning March 29th. The message seemed to make clear that the President, along with Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid, intend to pursue passage of health insurance reform through the budget reconciliation process. The process forward would have the House pass the Senate’s version of health reform without changes, sending the legislation to the President for signature. Changes to the Senate’s bill would be done through a separate piece of legislation advanced through the budget reconciliation process, avoiding a filibuster, as only a simple majority vote is required.
House and Senate Democratic leaders are working to finalize a reconciliation bill as early as this week. The reconciliation bill would then need to be scored by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). As the reconciliation bill is scored by CBO, Democratic leaders will be working with members of their own caucus to gain consensus on a variety of health care issues and working with the Senate Parliamentarian to figure out which provisions can be included in the reconciliation bill since Senate rules prohibit “extraneous matters” from consideration. The reconciliation bill is seen as key to coaxing some House Democrats to vote in favor of the Senate’s bill, which is opposed by some liberal and conservative Democrats.
Since the Congress can only do one reconciliation bill for fiscal year 2010, the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA) would have to advance along with healthcare, be passed through the normal legislative process, or be deferred until a future date. At present, the votes do not exist in the Senate to advance SAFRA through the normal legislative process. As a result, if it is to happen this year, the reconciliation process is the only possible vehicle. The Senate has yet to reveal its own version of SAFRA. However, the legislation is likely to emerge in the next few weeks, and move rapidly in order to meet the Easter deadline set by the President.
Pell grant recipients interested in providing a testimonial to the Senate on the program’s impact are invited to contact Jonathan Nurse (jnurse@uw.edu).
President Obama’s Health Insurance Reform Plan (Updated 2/22)
Department of Energy Announces $100 Million Available for Innovative Research Projects
Courtesy of the U.S. Department of Energy
ARPA-E’s 3rd funding opportunity to focus on grid-scale energy storage, electrical power technology, and building energy efficiency
WASHINGTON, D.C. – At the inaugural ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit today, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced $100 million in Recovery Act funding will be made available to accelerate innovation in green technology, increase America’s competitiveness and create new jobs. Today’s announcement comes as some of the nation’s top energy leaders and members of the scientific research community have gathered to ensure U.S. leadership in clean energy technologies.
“This is about unleashing the American innovation machine to solve the energy and climate challenge, while creating new jobs, new industries and new exports for America’s workers,” said Secretary Chu.
Today’s announcement, the ARPA-E’s third round of funding opportunity, is focused specifically on three technology areas:
The three areas of focus included in today’s funding opportunity are:
1. Grid-Scale Rampable Intermittent Dispatchable Storage (GRIDS). ARPA-E seeks to develop new technologies to enable the widespread deployment of cost-effective grid-scale energy storage. While many valuable applications for grid-scale storage exist, this program focuses on developing energy storage technologies to balance the short-duration variability in renewable generation. By investing in the development of grid-scale energy storage technology, this funding opportunity will allow the U.S. to assume global technology and manufacturing leadership in the emerging and potentially massive global market for stationary electricity storage infrastructure. This program seeks to develop revolutionary new storage systems that provide energy, cost, and cycle life comparable to pumped hydropower, but which are modular and can be widely implemented at any location across the power grid. Specifically, two areas will be considered: 1) proof of concept storage component projects focused on validating new, over-the-horizon electrical energy storage concepts, and 2) advanced system prototypes that address critical shortcomings of existing grid-scale energy storage technologies. Ultimately, technologies developed through this program will be scalable to the megawatt and megawatt-hour levels of power and energy capacity. This program will complement other Department of Energy grid-scale energy storage efforts by focusing on technology prototyping and proof-of-concept R&D efforts rather than pilot demonstration projects.
2. Agile Delivery of Electrical Power Technology (ADEPT). ARPA-E seeks to invest in materials for fundamental advances in soft magnetics, high voltage switches, and reliable, high-density charge storage. These investments will be coupled to advanced circuit architectures, and scalable manufacturing processes with the potential to leapfrog existing power converter performance while offering reductions in cost. Specifically, three categories of performance and integration level will be considered: 1) fully-integrated, chip-scale power converters for applications including, but not limited to, compact, efficient drivers for solid-state lighting, distributed micro-inverters for photovoltaics, and single-chip power supplies for computers, 2) kilowatt scale package integrated power converters by enabling applications such as low-cost, efficient inverters for grid-tied photovoltaics and variable speed motors, and 3) lightweight, solid-state, medium voltage energy conversion for high power applications such as solid-state electrical substations and wind turbine generators. Deploying advanced power electronics could provide as much as a 25-30 percent reduction in electricity consumption – or 12 percent of total U.S. energy consumption. Innovations in power electronics could lead to significant reduction in costs, which would promote U.S. businesses through technological leadership.
3. Building Energy Efficiency Through Innovative Thermodevices (BEET-IT). ARPA-E seeks to develop energy efficient cooling technologies and air conditioners (AC) for buildings to save energy and reduce GHG emissions from: (a) primary energy consumption due to space cooling and (b) refrigerants used in vapor compression systems. ARPA-E seeks innovative research and development approaches to increase energy efficiency and reduce GHG emissions due to cooling of buildings in the following areas: 1) cooling systems that use refrigerants with low global warming potential; 2) energy efficient air conditioning (AC) systems for warm and humid climates with an increased coefficient of performance (COP); and 3) vapor compression AC systems for hot climates for re-circulating air loads with an increased COP. The unique challenge for the U.S. market is to develop technologies that can be retrofitted into current cooling systems. For developing economies, there is a large market for new cooling technologies. The development of these technologies will reduce GHG emissions and significantly increase U.S. technological lead in rapidly emerging clean energy industries.
ARPA-E’s first solicitation, announced in early 2009, was highly competitive and resulted in funding 37 projects aimed at transformational innovations in energy storage, biofuels, carbon capture, renewable power, building efficiency, vehicles, and other areas. ARPA-E’s second solicitation announced in December, 2009 – which has yeilded nearly 500 concept papers – focused specifically on three areas of technology representing new approaches for biofuels, carbon capture, and batteries for electric vehicles.
This Week on Capitol Hill, March 1-5
The Senate resumes consideration Monday of a bill that would extend several expiring tax provisions and may also extend unemployment and COBRA health care benefits, as well as Medicaid funding.
A relatively light week is planned in the House, with the main floor action being on a bill intended to reduce the use of physical restraint on students.
Source: CQ Today Online News