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Lisa Murkowski on Welfare & Poverty
Independent Sr Senator (AK)
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Opposed the federal overtime laws
Murkowski said she consistently opposed the federal overtime laws that the Bush administration imposed this fall because she couldn’t get assurances that Alaskan workers were protected. According to the Congressional Record, she did vote twice to
generally cut off debate on a bill that Democrats had wanted to amend to, among other things, stop the overtime rules. Later, though, when the specific overtime vote came up in May, she voted for a Democrat-sponsored amendment to block the Bush rules.
Source: AK Senate Debate, Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
, Oct 20, 2004
Changes to Salmon program for WIC food
Recently, Murkowski won changes to the US Department of Agriculture’s WIC Food Program that will encourage the government to purchase Alaskan salmon. The program provides meals to 37 million children and 2 million lower-income pregnant women yearly.
Source: 2004 Senate campaign website, LisaMurkowski.com
, Jun 30, 2004
Voted YES on instituting National Service as a new social invention.
Congressional Summary:Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education (GIVE) Act: Adds to National and Community Service Act of 1990 (NCSA) purposes:- providing year-round opportunities in service-learning;
- involving program participants in emergency and disaster preparedness, relief, and recovery;
- increasing service opportunities for retiring professionals;
- encouraging service by individuals age 55 or older and continued service by national service alumni;
- focusing national service on the areas of national need.
Proponent's argument to vote Yes:Sen. BARBARA MIKULSKI (D, MD): [In developing national service over many years] we were not in the business of creating another new social program. What we were in the business of was creating a new social invention. What do I mean by that? In our country, we are known for our technological inventions. But also often overlooked, and sometimes undervalued, is our social inventions.
We created national service to let young people find opportunity to be of service and also to make an important contribution. But not all was rosy. In 2003, when I was the ranking member on the appropriations subcommittee funding national service, they created a debacle. One of their most colossal errors was that they enrolled over 20,000 volunteers and could not afford to pay for it. That is how sloppy they were in their accounting. I called them the "Enron of nonprofits."
And they worked on it. But all that is history. We are going to expand AmeriCorps activity into specialized corps. One, an education corps; another, a health futures corps; another, a veterans corps; and another called opportunity corps. These are not outside of AmeriCorps. They will be subsets because we find this is where compelling human need is and at the same time offers great opportunity for volunteers to do it.
Opponent's argument to vote No:No senators spoke against the amendment.
Reference: Serve America Act/GIVE Act;
Bill H.R. 1388
; vote number 2009-S115
on Mar 26, 2009
Page last updated: Dec 27, 2021