Huge thank you to Bart, Kirin, Madeleine, Sean and John for your incredible leadership —yet again!

On Mar 6, 2021, at 12:13 PM, Bart Johnsen-Harris <BJohnsen-Harris@defenders.org> wrote:



Hi all,

 

After an all-night “vote-a-rama” nightmare in the Senate, we have finally reached the end! There were two amendments on Keystone XL, both of which were defeated. Expect final passage of the underlying COVID relief bill shortly.

 

For those who have not been tracking, the vote-a-rama is a primarily defensive event in the Senate where any senator has the opportunity to force votes on an unlimited number of amendments. In this Congress, the vast majority of amendments have been offered by Republicans to force votes on tough issues for moderate Democrats. We ran a rapid response effort throughout the night to stave off bad riders. This is the second vote-a-rama of the year; the first was about a month ago when the budget reconciliation bill (on COVID relief) began its journey through Congress. During that last event, we had 8 environmental riders that received votes over the course of the night.

 

This round, we started at around 11:00am ET on Friday morning – but everything unexpectedly stalled for approximately 12 hours while Sen. Manchin negotiated behind the scenes with both parties over unemployment benefits. The substantive portion of the vote-a-rama started shortly before midnight, and lasted until now (noon ET on Saturday).

 

There were two environmental votes, both of which were on Keystone XL pipeline. The first was led by Sen. Tester: the vote was 51-48 (with Sens. Tester and Manchin voting in favor), but the amendment thankfully did not pass because it was subject to a 60-vote threshold. The second was a Motion to Commit from Sen. Daines (which would have stalled the entire COVID relief bill by sending it to committee), and was defeated with unanimous Democratic opposition due to the procedural mechanism being used.

 

Thank you to everyone who helped us hold down the fort! Special thanks to Madeleine Foote (LCV), Sean Alcorn (NRDC), and John Garder (NPCA) who each stayed up all night with us to play defense.

 

Onward!

 

Best,

Bart & Kirin

 

 

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Bart Johnsen-Harris Senior Representative, Government Relations   DEFENDERS OF WILDLIFE 1130 17th Street NW, Washington, DC 20036 CELL: 401.447.6376 Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Medium

 

 

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