Arizona’s Freshmen Reps: What’s Going On Here?

Kirkpatrick, Sinema & Barber all voted with the Republicans for CISPA

Is Steve Israel or Steny Hoyer calling the shots, or did Arizona’s three freshman reps reach these cynical heights all on their own? It’s hard to say, but my bet is on Israel or Hoyer. Or maybe it's the New Dem operation. Otherwise, it’s hard to fathom the votes we’re seeing from Kirkpatrick (AZ-01), Barber (AZ-02) and Sinema (AZ-09).

Regardless, the progressive base in Arizona (and, yes, there is one) is not amused. Blog For Arizona features a collection of progressive bloggers. At the start of the session, that group showed admirable restraint in the wake of Sandy Hook. Strangely enough, the reaction to that tragedy by Ron Barber, who took a bullet in Tucson two years earlier, was to pay homage to the Second Amendment. They could have jumped all over Barber, and few would have blamed them. Instead, they mounted a petition campaign to encourage Barber to lead the charge for sane gun laws. Barber actually responded positively for awhile, then went silent once out of the spotlight.

But the admirable patience of Arizona’s progressives has worn thin. It’s easy to understand why. Start with United Solutions, a supposedly "bi-partisan" group of freshmen reps that is about two-thirds Republican. And, no, we’re not talking moderate Republicans here. Joining the group were Arizona’s Kirkpatrick and Sinema. Here’s Sinema bragging about her membership (and lying about the composition of the group, which is far more heavily Republican than she lets on, and her role in founding the group, which was actually formed by lifelong Republican/New Dem Patrick Murphy and far right North Carolina Republican Robert Pittenger):



It was about that time that Bob Lord, posted this at Blog For Arizona: AZ Freshman Reps Sweep Gold, Silver and Bronze. Lord was referring to the Progressive Punch scores of the Democratic Freshman class. In that group, Kirkpatrick was worst, Barber was second worst, and Sinema was in a group tied for third worst.

Since then, the Arizona freshmen have continued to follow Steve Israel’s lead, or perhaps their own worst instincts, and the fire from the progressive community has grown more intense. Craig McDermott, who also posts at Blog For Arizona, wrote an open letter to the freshmen on the House Financial Services Committee, a group that includes Kyrsten Sinema, explaining that doing bad work for good reasons still is doing bad work. Donna Gratehouse at Democratic Diva expanded on McDermott’s theme, urging constituents not to be accepting of bad work, whether for good reasons or not. What had these freshmen done? Basically, they’d voted for legislation drafted almost entirely by Citigroup’s lobbyist, exempting vast swaths of trades from regulation under Dodd-Frank. A few weeks after the vote, Wall Street lackey and Democratic fundraising leader Joe Crowley led the freshmen on a tour of lower Manhattan, including receptions at both Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase.

Pamela Powers-Hannley at Blog For Arizona has been more direct in her criticism of Sinema, actually titling one post, Sinema Too Republican? Votes to Reduce Banking Regulations, in which she implored progressives to put the pressure on:

Not only has Sinema not supporting the Robin Hood Tax, her recent vote exempts many Wall Street trades from any regulation. This is the wrong direction for the American people. How many Wall Street bankers live in CD-9? How many people who would benefit from the revenue generated by the Robin Hood Tax live in CD-9? It's time for Sinema to do the math. Voting with Wall Street is a vote against her constituents in Arizona.

If you live in CD9, it's time to call Sinema and tell her you thought you were voting for that fiery State Senator-- not the banksters' handmaiden.

We see you, Rep. Sinema

Powers-Hannley’s depiction of Sinema may have been too specific. She appears to be doing her best not to be just the banksters’ handmaiden, but the handmaiden of corporate America at large. Amazingly, she and Barber voted with the Republicans for the failed Farm Bill, which would have cut $20 Billion in food stamp assistance, a huge chunk of which is going to children. Here’s E.J. Dionne, explaining the rank immorality of the legislation for which Sinema and Barber voted:

The bill the House voted down would have cut food stamps by $20.5 billion, eliminating food assistance to nearly 2 million low-income people, most of them working families with children or senior citizens.

This alone should have been bad enough to sink the bill. But then Republicans pushed through an amendment by Rep. Steve Southerland, R-Fla., to toughen work requirements in the program. Work requirements sound reasonable until you look at what Southerland’s amendment was actually designed to do.

As Robert Greenstein, the president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, explained, Southerland’s proposal violated “the most basic standards of human decency” because it made no effort, as other work requirements have in the past, to create employment openings for those who “want to work and would accept any job or work slot they could get, but cannot find jobs in a weak economy.”

In fact, noted Greenstein, a longtime advocate of nutrition assistance, the amendment barred states “from spending more on SNAP employment and training than they do now.” And it created incentives for states to throw people off food stamps by letting their governments keep half the SNAP savings to use for anything they wished (including, for example, tax cuts for the wealthy).

In a more rational political world, progressives and smallgovernment conservatives might join forces to slash subsidies for agribusiness and wealthy farmers while containing market distortions bred by price supports. But when Rep Jim McGovern, D-Mass., proposed an amendment to restore some of the food stamp funding by reducing spending on crop insurance, it was defeated.

And Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., exposed hypocrisy on the matter of government handouts by excoriating Republican House members who had benefited from farm subsidies but voted to cut food stamps.

The collapse of the farm bill will generally be played as a political story about Boehner’s failure to rally his own right wing. That’s true as far as it goes and should remind everyone of the current House leadership’s inability to govern. But this is above all a story about morality: There is something profoundly wrong when a legislative majority is so eager to risk leaving so many Americans hungry. That’s what the bill would have done, and why defeating it was a moral imperative.

Sinema signing on to a bill that would leave Americans, including many children, hungry, is stunning, given her background. If you heard her stump speech during her 2012, you would know about the years she spent during childhood living in an abandoned gas station. That story was the centerpiece of her speech. Based on that experience, Sinema would explain, governmental assistance is giving people in need a hand up, not a handout.

Finally, just last week, the House Financial Services Committee approved H.R. 1135, a bill to repeal the provision of the Dodd-Frank Act that requires public companies to report the ratio of their CEO pay to median worker compensation. As expected, the Republicans voted in lockstep for the amendment. But five of the twenty-eight Democrats did as well.

The pay ratio reporting requirement was a threat to the exorbitant pay CEO’s currently enjoy. Allow folks to compare the ratio of CEO pay to worker pay from one corporation to another, and CEO pay might be brought back to Earth. That’s why corporations had been working overtime to delay and dilute the regulations needed to implement the pay ratio disclosure. And they’d been successful on that front. But H.R. 1135 would solve this little “problem” for CEO’s entirely. And the argument for the amendment truly is Republican-esque. The pay ratio reporting, you see, would involve too much paperwork. Here’s committee chair Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) defending the amendment, according to Emily Chasan of the Wall Street Journal:

"I assume there is an infinite number of ratios some investors would find helpful to their decisions," Mr. Hensarling said. Companies might as well be required to calculate the ratio of workers with or without college degrees, the ratio of old versus young workers, or the ratio of office supplies purchased from big box retailers to local suppliers, he joked.

The individual votes on this atrocity were not easy to track down, but here they are. And who was among the five Democrats New Dems whoring for contributions from America’s CEOs? Why Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema, of course, doing her best to make sure the great-great grandchildren of America’s CEOs never have to experience life in an abandoned gas station.

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A Note From DCCC Chairman Steve Israel: "Top Race In The Country"

I shuddered to think which corrupt conservative shill he had decided was the "top race in the country." Since Israel was a member of the reactionary Blue Dog caucus himself before making a play for House leadership, I figured it would be one of the broken down, struggling, remaining Blue Dogs who are facing defeat next year: Barrow (GA), McIntyre (NC) or Matheson (UT). Those 3 vote far more frequently in concert with Boehner and Cantor than they do with Democrats. But when I opened the e-mail, I realized that Israel too had moved on from the wretched Blue Dogs in favor of the revitalized-- albeit basically the same ideologically-- New Dems. His pick, the worst New Dem of all: Patrick Murphy of Florida, a lifelong conservative Republican and opportunist who switched parties so he could run against Allen West. His rich daddy did the rest. Apparently daddy doesn't want to pay for junior's career anymore and Murphy sends out more campaign spam than any other member of Congress. And now he has Israel signing one for him:

TOP RACE IN THE COUNTRY

Howard --

As chairman of the committee charged with electing House Democrats, I want to tell you about one of the top races to watch in the entire country: Patrick Murphy in Florida's 18th district.

Republicans and outside groups have named Patrick as a top target and circled this district as a race they must win.

And I’ve seen what Karl Rove and the Koch Brothers are capable of: spending over a million dollars on deceitful ads in a single House race.

If we want to be successful in 2014, we have to make sure Patrick hits his grassroots goal. Here’s why: as soon as the fundraising numbers are released, the pundits will scour over reports and make a determination on whether or not Patrick's campaign has what it takes to win.

Please donate to Patrick's campaign before Sunday’s midnight deadline. Remember, every last dollar counts for his grassroots campaign.

I hope you’ll do your part.

Thanks,

Steve

OK, Steve, here's my part. Aside from founding a caucus to bring a horde of far right Republican freshmen like domestic terrorist Steve Stockman (R-TX), militia nut Kerry Bentovolio (R-MI) and hate Talk Radio host Trey Radel (R-FL) together with a tiny handful of the weakest-minded, cowardly and most naive Democratic freshmen-- people like Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ), Eric Swalwell (CA), Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), and Scott Peters (CA)-- Murphy has one of the most reactionary voting records of any Democratic freshman... or, for that matter, of any Democrat, period. His overall ProgressivePunch score is a dismal 43.64 (out of 100). Only 10 Democrats have worse scores, rotgut Blue Dogs like John Barrow, Jim Matheson, Collin Peterson, Henry Cuellar, Mike McIntyre... the real dreck of the caucus. But let's get specific.

Hoyer and Israel, sensing that Murphy is among the most corrupt freshmen, immediately put him on the House Financial Services Committee, one of Congress's top corridors of bribery from Wall Street. And on that committee, Murphy has been a reliable vote for the Republicans as they voted to dismantle the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reforms. Here's an example; "Mr. Murphy" is Patrick Murphy and this committee vote was nicely explained by Too Much Online:

This particular piece of legislation speaks to an ongoing frustration in America's body politic: the supersized paychecks that go to America’s top corporate executives. Average Americans, in overwhelming numbers, want something done to bring some common-sense back to CEO pay.

But the House Financial Services Committee, this past Wednesday, opted to do the exact reverse. By a 36-21 margin, committee members voted to repeal the only statutory provision now on the books that puts real heat on overpaid CEOs. The full House, observers expect, will shortly endorse this repeal.

The specific provision 31 Republicans and five Democrats voted to repeal-- section 953(b) of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act-- imposes a new disclosure mandate on America’s major corporations. Under Dodd-Frank, corporations must annually reveal the ratio between what they pay their CEO and what they pay their median-- most typical-- workers.

Corporations have had to disclose what they pay their CEOs ever since the Great Depression. But they’ve never had to disclose, until Dodd-Frank became law in 2010, their CEO pay as a multiple of what their average workers are earning.

Executive pay reformers consider this ratio information crucial to the struggle against executive excess. If Americans could see-- and compare-- the exact CEO-worker pay ratio from one corporation to another, the resulting negative publicity on those corporations with the widest pay gaps might help discourage excessive executive compensation in the future.

And if corporations should choose to ignore this negative publicity-- and charge ahead with lavish executive compensation-- the Dodd-Frank pay ratio disclosure mandate could serve as a stepping stone to tougher reform action.

Lawmakers could, for instance, set a specific CEO-worker pay multiple as the nation’s preferred corporate compensation standard and deny government contracts, tax breaks, and subsidies to any corporations that pay their execs over and above that standard.

The Dodd-Frank pay ratio disclosure mandate has the potential, in other words, to help extinguish what Forbes magazine recently dubbed “the out of control wildfire” that executive pay has become. But the mandate hasn’t extinguished anything yet because the mandate hasn’t yet gone into effect.

Corporate lobbyists have seen to that. They've been pressuring the Securities and Exchange Commission, the top federal watchdog over Corporate America, to gut the Dodd-Frank pay ratio provision.

This lobbying blitz has paid off. The SEC has to issue regulations before any newly legislated mandate over corporate behavior can be enforced. The agency has so far issued no regulations on CEO-worker pay disclosure-- and nearly three years have gone by since Dodd-Frank initially worked its way into law.

But America’s corporate leaders don’t want to have to rely solely on their ability to intimidate the SEC. They’ve also orchestrated a congressional drive to simply repeal the Dodd-Frank pay disclosure mandate outright.

How can lawmakers who carry Corporate America's water possibly defend repealing a measure as publicly popular as pay ratio disclosure? Easy. They simply paint corporations as the victims of overzealous government bureaucrats who want to drown them in burdensome-- and meaningless-- paperwork.

So... of course a crook like Steve Israel is excited about Murphy. Some of Patrick Murphy's greatest hits on the House floor, aside from voting against all the Democratic alternatives to the Ryan budget:

• Voted with the Republicans for the Keystone XL Pipeline

• Voted with Republicans for CISPA

• Voted with Republicans to penalize workers who get overtime pay

• Voted for GOP Farm bill that took billions from food stamp program

• Voted with the GOP to make sure there are no limits to the amount of subsidies wealthy farmers get

• Only Democrat voting to undermine America's Farmers Markets

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Who Does Wall Street Own In Congress?

The Grayson Takano No Cuts letter is the gold standard

The House doesn't usually stay in sessions Fridays, let alone take serious votes, but this past Friday, as we mentioned yesterday, Boehner and Cantor kept the Members in town to repay a promise they had made to their Wall Street masters to further weaken the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill. A bill Wall Street lobbyists wrote with one of their most pathetic congressional shills, Scott Garrett (R-NJ)-- and co-sponsored by 23 other bankster asswipes (20 of them members of the House Financial Services Committee who brazenly take large legalistic bribes from Wall Street firms they're supposed to oversee on behalf of the American people) came up for a vote. The bill to weaken Dodd-Frank passed 235-161.

Here's a list of the House Financial Services Committee members who co-sponsored the bill (+ Boehner and Cantor) with the bribes they took from Wall Street banksters last cycle, strongly pointing to an illegal quid pro quo:

• John Boehner (R-OH)- $1,415,075
• Eric Cantor (R-VA)- $902,400
• Scott Garrett (R-NJ)- $537,020
• Michele Bachmann (R-MN)- $79,024
• Spencer Bachus (R-AL)- $286,677
• Andy Barr (R-KY)- 0
• John Campbell (R-CA)- $79,750
• Tom Cotton (R-AR)- 0
• Stephen Fincher (R-TN)- $55,650
• Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm (R-Mafia)- $209,732
• Bill Huizenga (R-MI)- $51,800
• Randy Hultgren (R-IL)- $136,500
• Robert Hurt (R-VA)- $127,000
• Peter King (R-NY)- $128,950
• Patrick McHenry (R-NC)- $80,000
• Gary Miller (R-CA)- $32,750
• Mick Mulvaney (R-SC)- $500
• Randy Neugebauer (R-TX)- $125,500
• Stevan Pearce (R-NM)- $19,950
• Robert Pittenger (R-NC)- 0
• Dennis Ross (R-FL)- $18,200
• Marlin Stutzman (R-IN)- $15,250
• Ann Wagner (R-MO)- 0

Don't worry about the 4 Republicans with zero dollars from Wall Street. They're freshmen and weren't doing errands for the banksters in 2012, the way they are now. Next year, each will get thousands of dollars from Wall Street. As economist Dean Baker explained last week in Cutting Social Security and Not Taxing Wall Street, "Wall Street bankers have a lot more political power than old and disabled people who depend on Social Security." Like many of us, Baker is frustrated that Obama isn't fighting the Wall Street/GOP approach... and perhaps even embracing it.

As we move toward the fifth anniversary of the great financial crisis of 2008, people should be outraged that cutting Social Security is now on the national agenda, while taxing Wall Street is not. After all, if we take at face value the claims made back in 2008 by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and former Treasury Secretaries Henry Paulson and Timothy Geithner, Wall Street excesses brought the economy to the brink of collapse.

But now the Wall Street behemoths are bigger than ever and President Obama is looking to cut the Social Security benefits of retirees. That will teach the Wall Street boys to be more responsible in the future.

Most people are now familiar with President's Obama's proposal to cut Social Security by reducing the annual cost-of-living adjustment (COLA). While the final formula is somewhat convoluted, the net effect is to reduce benefits by an average of roughly 3.0 percent.

Since Social Security benefits account for more than 70 percent of the income of a typical retiree, this cut is more than a 2.0 percent reduction in income. By comparison, a wealthy couple earning $500,000 a year would see a hit to their after-tax income of just 0.6 percent from the tax increase that President Obama put in place last year.

While President Obama is willing to make seniors pay a price for the economic crisis, his administration is unwilling to impose any burdens on Wall Street. Specifically, it has consistently opposed a Wall Street speculation tax: effectively a sales tax on trades of stock and derivatives. The Obama administration has even used its power to try to block efforts by European countries to impose their own taxes on financial speculation.

If the idea of taxing stock trades sounds strange, it shouldn't. The United States used to impose a tax of 0.04 percent until Wall Street lobbied to eliminate it in the mid-1960s. Many countries, including the United Kingdom, Switzerland, China, and India already impose taxes on stock trades.

The tax in the UK is 0.5 percent on stock trades (0.25 percent for both the buyer and the seller). It dates back more than three centuries. The country raises more than 0.2 percent of GDP ($32 billion in the United States) from the tax each year. The tax has not prevented the London stock exchange from being one of the largest in the world.

There are currently two bills in Congress for a similar tax in the United States. A bill by Minnesota Representative Keith Ellison would impose the same tax as the UK on stock trades and would apply a scaled rate to options, futures, credit default swaps and other derivative instruments. It could raise more than $150 billion annually or more than $2 trillion over the ten year budget window.

A second bill has been put forward by Iowa Senator Tom Harkin and Oregon Representative Peter DeFazio. This bill would apply a 0.03 percent tax to trades of stock and a wide range of other financial assets. According to the Joint Tax Committee, the bill would raise close to $40 billion a year or over $400 billion over a ten-year budget window once it is implemented.

Unfortunately the administration has consistently opposed both bills. It claims that it is concerned about the incidence of these taxes-- that ordinary investors would see large burdens from the tax. It also claims to be worried that the taxes will disrupt financial markets by making trading more costly.

Neither of these stories passes the laugh test. Ordinary investors don't trade much, and therefore are not going to feel much impact from the tax. If someone with $100,000 in a 401(k) (this is much larger than the typical 401(k)) turns it over at the rate of 50 percent annually, they would pay $15.00 each year as a result of the Harkin-DeFazio tax.

Furthermore research shows that investors reduce their trading as costs increase. This means that if the tax increases trading costs by 20 percent, then investors will reduce their trading by roughly the same amount (in this example, turnover would fall to 40 percent annually). That means that the net cost of turnover in a 401(k) will barely change for a typical investor as a result of the tax. Wall Street would just see much less business.

So the Obama administration wants us to believe that it is willing to cut the Social Security benefits of retiree living on $15,000 a year in Social Security by $450 but it opposes a Wall Street speculation tax because it is concerned that investors with $100,000 in a 401(k) may pay a few dollars a year in additional trading costs. Only a reporter with the Washington Post would believe a story like that.

The other part of the Obama administration's story is equally laughable. The cost of financial transactions has plummeted in the last four decades because of computers. Even the Ellison tax rate would just raise costs back to their mid-'80s level. The Harkin-DeFazio tax rate would probably still leave costs lower than they were in 2000.

The country certainly had a vibrant capital market and stock exchange in the 1980s, taking costs part of the way back to this level will not prevent Wall Street from serving its proper role of transferring capital from savers to borrowers. It will just clamp down on speculation.

The basic story is very simple. Wall Street bankers have a lot more political power than old and disabled people who depend on Social Security. That is why President Obama is working to protect the former and cut benefits for the latter.

David Cicilline, a co-signer of the Grayson Takano No Cuts letter to Obama, proposed a congressional resolution that isn't as strong and definitive, and (therefore) has attracted more support in the House:

Expressing the sense of the Congress that the Chained Consumer Price Index should not be used to calculate cost-of-living-adjustments for Social Security Benefits

Whereas the Social Security program was established more than 77 years ago and has provided economic security to generations of Americans through benefits earned based on contributions made over a worker's lifetime;

Whereas the Social Security program continues to provide modest benefits - averaging approximately $14,000 per year-- to more than 53,000,000 individuals, including 37,000,000 retired workers in February 2013;

Whereas the Social Security program has no borrowing authority, has accumulated assets of $2,700,000,000,000, and, therefore, does not contribute to the Federal budget deficit;

Whereas the Board of Trustees of the Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund projects that such Trust Fund an pay full benefits through 2032;

Whereas the Social Security program is designed to ensure that benefits keep pace with inflation through cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) that are based upon the measured changes in prices of goods and services purchased by consumers, currently the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W) published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics;

Whereas the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes a supplemental measure of inflation, the Chained Consumer Price Index for all Urban Consumers (C-CPI-U), or "Chained CPI," which adjusts for projected changes in consumer behavior resulting from price fluctuations known as the "substitution effect," which occurs when consumers buy more goods and services whose prices are rising slower than average and less of those rising faster than average;

Whereas studies indicate typical Social Security beneficiaries spend significantly greater shares of their budget than consumers generally on health care, prices for which have increased at higher than average rates, and health care may not easily be substituted by consumers such as seniors;

Whereas the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that using the Chained CPI to calculate Social Security COLAs would reduce Social Security benefits by .25 percent per year as compared to current policy, resulting in a reduction in outlays of $112,000,000,000 over the first decade;

Whereas reductions in Social Security benefits from using the Chained CPI to calculate Social Security COLAs would continue to compound over time, and the AARP Public Policy Institute estimates that such reductions would grow to 3 percent after 10 years and 8.5 percent after 30 years;

Whereas Social Security Works estimates that using the Chained CPI to calculate Social Security COLAs would reduce annual Social Security benefits of the average earner - who is making $43,518-- by $658 at age 75, $1,147 at age 85, and $1,622 at age 95; and

Whereas reductions in Social Security benefits would harm some of our most vulnerable populations: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That it is the sense of the Congress that the Chained Consumer Price Index should not be used to calculate cost of living adjustments for Social Security benefits.

So far over 90 Democrats have signed on, spanning the ideological divide inside the congressional caucus from extreme right-wingers like Ron Barber (AZ) and Kirkpatrick (AZ), who are always looking for opportunities to tell their constituents they're against Obama, to normal liberal Democrats like Jan Schakowsky (IL), Judy Chu (CA) and Donna Edwards (MD) who prefer to support Obama. Here's the list of Democrats urging Obama to untangle himself from another Republican assault on American working families:

Ron Barber (New Dem-AZ)
Karen Bass (D-CA)
Joyce Beatty (D-OH)
Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR)
Robert Brady (D-PA)
Bruce Braley (D-IA)
Corrine Brown (D-FL)
Cheri Bustos (D-IL)
Tony Cardenas (D-CA)
Matt Cartwright (D-PA)
Judy Chu (D-CA)
Yvette Clarke (D-NY)
Lacy Clay (D-MO)
John Conyers (D-MI)
Joe Courtney (New Dem-CT)
Elijah Cummings (D-MD)
Danny Davis (D-IL)
Pete DeFazio (D-OR)
Rosa DeLauro (D-CT)
Ted Deutch (D-FL)
Mike Doyle (D-PA)
Donna Edwards (D-MD)
Keith Ellison (D-MN)
Bill Enyart (D-IL)
Lois Frankel (D-FL)
Marcia Fudge (D-OH)
John Garamendi (D-CA)
Alan Grayson (D-FL)
Gene Green (D-TX)
Raul Grijalva (D-AZ)
Luis Gutierrez (D-IL)
Janice Hahn (D-CA)
Colleen Hanabusa (New Dem-HI)
Alcee Hastings (D-FL)
Brian Higgins (D-NY)
Rush Holt (New Dem-NJ)
Mike Honda (D-CA)
Jared Huffman (D-CA)
Shiela Jackson Lee (D-TX)
Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX)
Hank Johnson (D-GA)
Marcy Kaptur (D-OH)
Bill Keating (D-MA)
Dan Kildee (D-MI)
Ann Kirpatrick (AZ)
Jim Langevin (D-RI)
Barbara Lee (D-CA)
John Lewis (D-GA)
Dave Loebsack (D-IA)
Alan Lowenthal (D-CA)
Stephen Lynch (D-MA)
Dan Maffei (New Dem-NY)
Ed Markey (D-MA) Doris Matsui (D-CA)
Jim McDermott (D-WA)
Jim McGovern (D-MA)
Mike Michaud (Blue Dog-ME)
Gwen Moore (D-WI)
Jerry Nadler (D-NY)
Grace Napolitano (D-CA)
Richard Nolan (D-MN)
Ed Pastor (D-AZ)
Donald Payne (D-NJ)
Gary Peters (New Dem-MI)
Chellie Pingree (D-ME)
Mark Pocan (D-WI)
Charlie Rangel (D-NY)
Nick Rahall (D-WV)
Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA)
Raul Ruiz (D-CA)
Bobby Rush (D-IL)
Tim Ryan (D-OH)
John Sarbanes (D-MD)
Jan Schakowsky (D-IL)
Bobby Scott (D-VA)
José Serrano (D-NY)
Carol Shea Porter (D-NH)
Albio Sires (D-NJ)
Jackie Speier (D-CA)
Mark Takano (D-CA)
BennieThompson (D-MS)
Dina Titus (D-NV)
Paul Tonko (D-NY)
Juan Vargas (New Dem-CA)
Mark Veasey (D-TX)
Filemon Vela (New Dem-TX)
Nydia Velazquez (D-NY)
Maxine Waters (D-CA)
Peter Welch (D-VT)
Frederica Wilson (D-FL)

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