For a lame duck, the current session of the US Congress certainly seems to be hitting its stride. Recent days have seen a raft of important legislation passing through both the House of Representatives and the Senate as lawmakers push to get their highest priority bills turned into laws.
Here’s a quick overview of some of the developments today that will be of special interest to the scientific community:
Let’s get it STARTED…
The Senate voted 67-28 today to vote tomorrow on the New START treaty, a nuclear arms agreement between Russia and the US. New START – which stands for New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty — is seen as important to the credibility of Barack Obama, who signed the treaty with president Dmitry Medvedev of Russia in April in Prague. The treaty’s opponents in the Senate argued that it should not be ratified during a lame duck session because of the lack of time for a lengthy debate. Their failure today to prevent the treaty coming to a vote tomorrow suggests they do not have the votes needed to halt ratification, which needs a two thirds majority, or 67 votes. There are 58 Democrats in the Senate expected to vote in favor together with nine Republicans who have voiced public support of the treaty.
Success greets COMPETES
The America COMPETES Act has passe, defying the odds and keeping funding for the National Science Foundation and other agencies on course to double within a decade. See our full story.
You are what you regulate…
In separate action, the House approved the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act by a vote of 215-144, sending the landmark bill to President Barack Obama’s desk for signing into law. The act, which markedly boosts the powers of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to police domestic food safety and to regulate imported foods, marks the most significant expansion of US food safety oversight since the The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic (FDC) Act of 1938.
You can read about the bill’s particulars, and its rough road to passage, here,
Image: Wikimedia Commons