Labor

Congress will receive testimony tomorrow from a former Army ranger who says the Library of Congress turned her down for a job after learning of her gender transition.

Diane Schroer, a former Airborne ranger, will testify tomorrow in the House Education and Labor Committee when it examines transgender discrimination in the workplace.

Schroer says she accepted a job as a terrorism research analyst for the Library of Congress, but when she told her would-be employers that she was in the process of a male-to-female gender transition, the offer was rescinded. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is representing Schroer in a discrimination lawsuit against the Library of Congress.

The ACLU is calling the hearing Congress's first on transgender issues, though hearings on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act last year dealt with transgender discrimination.

The committee decided to hold the hearing earlier this year expecting that it would assist one of its subcommittees in drafting legislation to address transgender discrimination, the ACLU told The Hill.

National Center for Lesbian Rights Legal Director Shannon Minter will also testify at tomorrow's hearing.

Senate Republicans blocked an attempt Wednesday by Democrats to move a 13-week extension of unemployment benefits. The GOP objection to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's (D-Nev.) unanimous consent request virtually ensures that Democrats will add the politically popular measure to the supplemental war bill that the House plans to pass this week. President Bush has threatened to veto the bill over the unemployment-insurance extension.

-Manu Raju

House Democrats will push for an extension of unemployment benefits this afternoon in response to a lagging U.S. economy.

A bill authored by Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) will come up for a vote this afternoon; House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Democratic leaders will hold a press conference following the vote. The bill would extend unemployment benefits for workers whose current unemployment compensation has run out.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics' May jobs report showed unemployment having risen from 5 percent to 5.5 percent. Democrats have posed McDermott's bill, called the Emergency Extended Unemployment Compensation Act of 2008, as a response.

House Republicans today unveiled their "American Families Agenda," a range of proposals including 47 bills that, Republicans say, would update laws to reflect the needs of modern families.

The agenda's premise is that American families have changed since the 1950s: more single parents and working mothers have meant a new set of needs for families -- needs laws should address.

The agenda includes bills to increase domestic energy production, train underprivileged women under the Small Business Administration, allow workers to trade overtime for time off, provide tax credits for health insurance, and increase penalties on sex offenders.

House Republican Conference Vice Chair Kay Granger (Texas), who spearheaded the agenda, says it will assure five solutions for families: healthcare and retirement security, access to education, protection for children from predators, support for military families, and more time and money (including lower energy costs, assistance for small businesses, and facilitation of taking time off work).

Granger unveiled the agenda at a press conference this afternoon with House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), House Republican Conference Chairman Adam Putnam (Fla.), House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) Chairman Tom Cole (Okla.), and other Republican House members.

See Granger's release here.

House Democrats opposing President Bush's Colombia Free Trade Agreement criticized the deal today after Bush sent it to Congress.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) said in a joint statement that they could not support the deal. Bush's "unprecedented decision to send a free trade agreement to Congress without following established protocols," they said, was "counter-productive."

Members of the House Trade Working Group offered even sharper criticism. Rep. Mike Michaud, the group's co-founder, said the deal was "dead on arrival."

"If the Bush Administration really believes this agreement is vital to national security interests, it would not send it to a certain defeat," Michaud said in a statement. "They would work with Democrats to stop labor leader assassinations and address forced displacement and murder of Afro-Colombians."

Assassinations of labor leaders by the Colombian military have formed the cornerstone of U.S. labor unions' opposition to the deal.

Pennsylvania