Senate

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Rep. Tim Scott (R-SC) this week proposed legislation that would require all decisions to form unions, stay in unions and go on strike to be made by secret ballot, and prevent unions from spending dues on political activities without the written consent of workers.

Hatch said his bill, the Employee Rights Act, is not anti-union, but rather pro-worker, as it it aimed at giving workers more control over decisions to unionize or abandon a union.

"Contrary to what some may think, I am not anti-union and I do not want to stand in the way of unionization if the decision to unionize is truly the will of the employees," Hatch said. "However, I believe that the right not to join a union is equally important."

As the dust settled after the grueling fight to raise the nation’s debt ceiling, conservative activist Grover Norquist on Wednesday suggested that even greater battles were just over the horizon.

“[R]ecognize that this is not the end game,” said Norquist, who was the keynote speaker at the conservative Leadership Institute’s Wednesday Wake-Up Club Breakfast. “The fight we just had was not Armageddon.”

“This was not the final conflict to determine the direction of the country," he warned.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and other Senate Republicans on Tuesday introduced a bill aimed at blocking pending regulations that would require banks to report to the Internal Revenue Service all interest deposits paid to nonresident aliens (NRA).

Rubio, along with Texas GOP Sens. John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison, introduced S. 1506 because they believe the pending regulations have the potential to drive billions of dollars of deposits away from U.S. banks. A summary of the bill provided by Rubio’s office argues that this could leave U.S. banks undercapitalized and less able to lend in the U.S.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should consider the number of jobs new regulations would kill before implementing them, Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) wrote in an op-ed published Wednesday.

“Under President Obama's administration, the EPA has promulgated new regulations governing greenhouse gases, industrial boilers, cement kilns, dust and spilled milk, just to name a few," said Toomey, who also accused the agency of costing industry billions of dollars in lost productivity. Read more...

Hatch said the way to restore the nation's integrity is by "reducing the size and cost of the federal government."

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.). blasted the Senate GOP on Tuesday night for slowing the upper chamber's pace on confirming President Obama's judicial nominees after 20 were left in limbo for the month-long recess.

"I am disappointed as Senate Republicans continue to delay these much needed and long awaited confirmations," said Leahy. "[T]he Senate’s Republican leadership has refused to consent to vote on these qualified, consensus nominations."

A plan by Senate Democrats to approve a House-passed patent reform bill in September is a likely sign that U.S. patent holders have lost this year's fight to end "fee diversion," or using patent fees to fund other federal government programs instead of adding capacity at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to deal with a growing patent-application backlog.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Tuesday filed for cloture on the House-passed bill, H.R. 1249, and said the measure would be among the first the Senate takes up in September. Both the House and Senate are in recess until early September.

The legislation passed by a vote of 74 to 26 and was signed into law by Obama an hour later.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Tuesday that Republicans would have to accept revenue increases as part of the larger deficit deal, or else they could expect to see cuts in defense spending.

"[Republicans] have to understand today, right now, the day that we passed the bill, that they will have no legislation coming out of that committee unless revenues are a part of the mix. It's a fact of life,” Reid said on NPR’s “All Things Considered” radio program.

“In my private conversations with the Speaker [John Boehner] and with the [Senate] Minority Leader [Mitch McConnell] over here, they assume and the legislation allows revenue will be part of the mix,” Reid said.

The Senate adjourned for its summer recess at 6:45 p.m. Tuesday night following a grueling month of legislative activity.

Prior to releasing the upper chamber, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) lamented that the House and the Senate were unable to come to a resolution over a dispute that has shut down part of the Federal Aviation Administration, leaving 4000 employees laid off and several aviation related construction projects on hold.