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Area Votes in Congress

WASHINGTON - Here is how Philadelphia-area members of Congress voted on major issues last week: House Highway, mass-transit projects. Voting 421-4, the House sent the Senate a bill (HR 662) to provide billions of dollars in funding for road and bridge construction, mass transit, and highway safety from March 4 through Sept. 30. The programs are funded not by general appropriations but by the Highway Trust Fund, which gets its revenue from federal gasoline taxes.

WASHINGTON - Here is how Philadelphia-area members of Congress voted on major issues last week:

House

Highway, mass-transit projects. Voting 421-4, the House sent the Senate a bill (HR 662) to provide billions of dollars in funding for road and bridge construction, mass transit, and highway safety from March 4 through Sept. 30. The programs are funded not by general appropriations but by the Highway Trust Fund, which gets its revenue from federal gasoline taxes.

A yes vote was to pass the bill.

Voting yes: Robert E. Andrews (D., N.J.), Robert A. Brady (D., Pa.), John Carney (D., Del.), Charles W. Dent (R., Pa.), Chaka Fattah (D., Pa.), Michael Fitzpatrick (R., Pa.), Jim Gerlach (R., Pa.), Tim Holden (D., Pa.), Frank A. LoBiondo (R., N.J.), Pat Meehan (R., Pa.), Joseph R. Pitts (R., Pa.), Jon Runyan (R., N.J.), Allyson Y. Schwartz (D., Pa.), and Christopher H. Smith (R., N.J.).

"Bridge to nowhere." Voting 181-246, the House defeated a Democratic bid to strip HR 662 (above) of funds for building the Gravina Island Bridge linking Ketchikan, Alaska, with an airport on sparsely populated Gravina Island. This is the "bridge to nowhere" lampooned in recent years as an example of wasteful congressional earmarks. While notoriety has cost the Gravina Island project much of its anticipated federal funding since 2005, HR 662 contains $183 million in fiscal 2011 spending for it and the Knik Arm Crossing Bridge, another controversial project in Alaska. This motion sought to remove the $183 million.

A yes vote was to defund the "bridge to nowhere."

Voting yes: Andrews, Brady, Carney, Fattah, Holden, and Schwartz.

Voting no: Dent, Gerlach, Fitzpatrick, LoBiondo, Meehan, Pitts, Runyan, and Smith.

Health-law paperwork. Voting 314-112, the House passed a Republican bill (HR 4) to strip the new health law of its rule that businesses issue an IRS Form 1099 to any vendor to whom they pay at least $600 annually. The rule would raise funds for preventive care while helping the IRS catch tax cheats. But it has come under bipartisan assault as a paperwork burden on small businesses.

A yes vote was to pass the bill.

Voting yes: Andrews, Carney, Dent, Fitzpatrick, Gerlach, Holden, LoBiondo, Meehan, Pitts, Runyan, and Smith.

Voting no: Brady, Fattah, and Schwartz.

Stopgap 2011 budget. Voting 335-91, the House passed a stopgap measure (HJ Res 44) to keep the government in full operation between March 5 and March 18 while cutting spending by $4 billion over that period. The House and Senate will use the two weeks to negotiate a budget path for the last half of fiscal 2011, which ends Sept. 30. Among this bill's cuts are $650 million in highway spending and a $2.8 billion rescission of once-popular earmarks that have been abandoned by their congressional sponsors.

A yes vote was to pass the bill.

Voting yes: Brady, Carney, Dent, Fattah, Fitzpatrick, Gerlach, Holden, LoBiondo, Meehan, Pitts, Runyan, Schwartz, and Smith.

Voting no: Andrews.

Oil-industry taxes. Voting 176-249, the House defeated a Democratic motion to HJ Res 44 (above) to suspend the oil-depletion allowance and other oil-industry tax breaks at a time when domestic programs are being cut.

A yes vote backed the motion.

Voting yes: Andrews, Brady, Carney, Fattah, Holden, and Schwartz.

Voting no: Dent, Gerlach, Fitzpatrick, LoBiondo, Meehan, Pitts, Runyan, and Smith.

Senate

Patent-law dispute. Voting 87-13, the Senate retained "first to invent" as the U.S. standard for giving priority to competing patent applications. This stripped a patent-reform bill (S 23) of language to switch to the "first-inventor-to-file" standard used by most other industrialized countries to determine patent winners and losers. The bill remained in debate.

A yes vote was to retain the first-to-invent standard.

Voting yes: Thomas Carper (D., Del.), Bob Casey (D., Pa.), Chris Coons (D., Del.), Frank Lautenberg (D., N.J.), Robert Menendez (D., N.J.), and Pat Toomey (R., Pa.).

Stopgap 2011 budget. Voting 91-9, the Senate joined the House in passing a temporary fiscal 2011 spending bill (HJ Res 44, above) to avert a government shutdown at week's end. President Obama then signed what is the fifth 2011 stopgap appropriations bill passed by Congress since last fall.

A yes vote was to pass the bill.

Voting yes: Carper, Casey, Coons, Lautenberg, Menendez, and Toomey.

This week. The House will take up bills addressing the U.S. housing crisis, while the Senate will resume debate on reforming procedures for awarding patents.