Last-Minute Votes

Since Congress is going away for Thanksgiving, yesterday was a busy day.  Before recessing just before midnight, the House acted on the following:

  • Passed the Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act.  This bill is designed to address some of the issues raised by the recent subprime mortgage meltdown. It tightens up licensing requirements for mortgage brokers, restricts some mortgage types (including those with big balloon payments), and requires more due diligence on borrower repayment ability.
  • Passed a new electronic surveillance bill.  This bill is an attempt to address the issues raised by the use of warrantless wiretapping.  It has provisions to restrict warrantless wiretapping to times when the nation is under a declaration of war, or when an act of Congress authorizes it.  The bill also instructs the President to turn over information about all warrantless wiretaps since 9/11.
  • Failed to override President Bush's veto of the Labor, HHS and Education appropriation bill.
Randy Kuhl voted against the mortgage reform and wiretap reform bills, and against the veto override.  The mortgage reform bill had significant Republican support (64 votes).  The wiretap bill was essentially a party line vote.  The override vote also had a good number of Republicans supporting it (54), through Kuhl's vote against it is consistent with his original vote against the bill.

Comments

It still amazes me how Kuhl can pass so many laws they fly in the face of the needs of his constituency. The folks across the street from me are losing their home to the bank, and the shoreline of Canandaigua lake is peppered with houses that people can't pay both taxes and mortgages on.

I think one reason is that he's part of a Republican strategy to use the Senate as a "cleanup team" that gets rid of the parts of bills that Republicans don't like. For example, the Senate will probably strip off some of the parts of the mortgage bill that are objectionable to banks, and leave a bill that Kuhl may support.