The USPS Fairness Act sets the stage for a taxpayer-funded bailout of the Retiree Health Benefits Fund. There are serious and fiscal proposals to address the issues that face the U.S. Postal Service. The USPS Fairness Act is not one of them.

The PRO Act is one of the most anti-worker and anti-business bills that we have ever seen brought to the House floor. Introduced by Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), the PRO Act is a giveaway to labor unions that would harm our economy and that especially targets workers who choose not to join unions.

The additional appropriations in the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations for Disaster Relief and Puerto Rico Disaster Tax Relief Act would spend an additional $4.67 billion in FY 2020. While we understand that this is for emergency disaster relief, question both whether it is necessary to appropriate new funds whether they will even be put to good use, considering that a) there is $34.846 billion left in the Disaster Relief Fund and b) that it recently came to light that unused resources provided after Hurricane Maria in September 2017 were discovered in a warehouse in Ponce, Puerto Rico.

This bill is nothing short of an assault on the vaping industry, which provides smokers with a method of harm reduction that is 95 percent safer than traditional, combustible cigarettes. The message House Democrats are sending with H.R. 2339 is that Americans who want to kick the habit through vaping should either “quit or die.” H.R. 2339 would outright ban online sales of flavored vaping products, and ban the flavors themselves. The bill would also require graphic health warnings on tobacco packaging. This is nanny state governance at its worst.

Sponsored by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-New York), this bill would reauthorize expiring provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), including Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act and the “lone wolf” and “roving wiretap” authorities. This bill contains a lot of window dressing to conceal that it largely leaves untouched the legal authorities that have been abused to circumvent the Constitution and acquire the data of millions of innocent Americans without a warrant.

This bill is being brought to the floor, pushed by House Democrats, without any committee discussion or debate in the primary committee of jurisdiction and being brought to the floor without the opportunity for amendments. The process for this bill is only one of the concerns we have over H.R. 6201. Furthermore, it is deceitful of House Democrats to attempt to fast-track a bill to deal with a serious problem like the nationwide concern over coronavirus, which is not much more than a wishlist of government programs and policies that they would, make no mistake, like to see made permanent. These programs and policies include an increase in the Federal Matching Assistance Program (FMAP) formula for Medicaid, expansions of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and paid family leave.

The HEROES Act is a $3 trillion, 1,800-page partisan messaging bill that has no chance of becoming law. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) knows that this bill won’t become law. Yet, she is forcing the House to vote as a political stunt, after refusing to bring the House back into session last week due to concerns of containing the spread of COVID-19. This is blatant hypocrisy at its worst. Nearly all of the HEROES Act is a wishlist of far-left demands, several of which are unrelated to COVID-19. The HEROES Act would bail out state and local governments to the tune of nearly $1 trillion. Many states seeking this bailout have been fiscally mismanaged for years. The HEROES Act would extend enhanced unemployment benefits past the current deadline of July 31, 2020 to January 31, 2021 and create a supplemental period of March 31, 2021 for those whose benefits have not been exhausted. This would only further prolong the economic recovery, putting employers, who will undoubtedly need workers to fill jobs, in direct competition with the federal government paying individuals not to work. Among its many, many other provisions, the HEROES Act includes expansions of welfare programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Medicaid. The bill would also provide another round of tax rebate payments, send money to states for highways and mass transit, impose mandates on states for federal elections, bail out failing union pension plans, prohibit cost-sharing for any COVID-19-related treatment, and create a contract tracing initiative.

This is a procedural vote in the House to go to conference with the Senate on the USA FREEDOM Reauthorization Act, H.R. 6172. House Democratic leadership botched the handling of this bill from the beginning, denying an open process to members. Leading up to this particular vote, Democratic leadership and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) continued to play games, negotiating in bad faith with surveillance reformers. A conference committee would lead to reopening H.R. 6172 and watering down reforms, such as the Lee-Leahy amendment, that had passed the Senate. This is why FreedomWorks has taken a rare step of opposing a procedural motion in the House.

The Washington, D.C. Admission Act would admit Washington, D.C. into the Union, making it the 51st state. It’s very likely that this bill is unconstitutional. Article I, Section 8, Clause 17 of the Constitution states: “The Congress shall have Power…[t]o exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings.” The Washington, D.C. Admission Act would reduce the size of the federal district to a small strip of land that includes the U.S. Capitol Building, the White House, and the National Mall. The bill would also give Washington, D.C. one representative in the U.S. House of Representatives and two senators in the U.S. Senate, increasing the number of voting members of Congress to 538 (436 in the House and 102 in the Senate). Simply put, the Constitution must be amended to make Washington, D.C. a state. As Roger Pilon of the Cato Institute once noted, this has been the conclusion of every presidential administration since John F. Kennedy, with the exception of the Obama administration. Even in the Obama administration, the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) came to the same conclusion that previous administrations had reached. Then-Attorney General Eric Holder didn’t like the conclusion reached by OLC, so he sought and received a conclusion that he liked from the Office of the Solicitor General. Of course, the Washington, D.C. Admission Act is a political ploy. The admission of Washington, D.C. into the Union would bring one representative in House of Representatives and two senators in the Senate. The District of Columbia, which was given three electoral votes through the Twenty-Third Amendment, is overwhelmingly Democratic and would ensure more political power for Democrats in Congress, particularly in the Senate.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Enhancement Act, H.R. 1425, doubles down on ObamaCare by attempting to force more people into both the exchanges and Medicaid while also adding on socialist-style price controls on prescription drugs. Although Democrats have made clear that Medicare for All remains their policy end-goal, this latest proposal seems to show that they are content in the meantime to continue herding patients into the existing silos that ObamaCare narrowed health care payments into.