Washington, D.C
Senate passes FAA bill after DC-area senators drop blockade – Washington Examiner
The Senate passed a major aviation bill on Thursday, marking an end to a monthslong fight over whether to add more flights to the nation’s busiest runway.
Last month, negotiators in both chambers unveiled a compromise bill that would reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration for another five years, but a provision to add 10 slots at Reagan National Airport prompted outrage from Washington, D.C.-area senators, who warned the flights would cause delays and a risk to public safety.
The four senators, from Maryland and Virginia, held up passage for days, demanding a vote to strip out the slots, but they ultimately relented with the Friday expiration of the law looming.
The measure passed in an 88-4 vote, with Sens. Ben Cardin (D-MD), Tim Kaine (D-VA), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), and Mark Warner (D-VA) opposed.
“After months of painstaking work, the FAA reauthorization has passed in the Senate today,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said ahead of the final vote. “Aviation safety has been front of mind for millions of Americans recently, and passing this FAA bill is the best thing Congress can do to give Americans the peace of mind they deserve.”
The House departed for the week on Wednesday, meaning the soonest it can get through Congress and to President Joe Biden’s desk is Tuesday, but the lower chamber passed a one-week extension to avoid a temporary lapse before it left.
That extension cleared the upper chamber by voice vote less than an hour after the flagship bill.
The fight over DCA slots was not the only holdup on the FAA bill. Negotiators tweaked the legislation at the last minute to resolve a dispute over the Biden administration’s airline refund policy.
Meanwhile, senators saw the reauthorization, one of the final must-pass bills of the current Congress, as a chance to attach unrelated provisions. More than a hundred amendments were filed, but none were ultimately granted a vote.
The Senate operates by unanimous consent, so any one senator could have dragged the process out further. As recently as Thursday afternoon, members from Maryland and Virginia were promising to use every “procedural right” they had to force a vote on the flights.
But they agreed to drop their holds with a simple gesture from Schumer. He brought forward a compromise amendment that would have allowed the flights if the transportation secretary certifies they do not pose a safety hazard.
The amendment was quickly blocked by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), the top Republican on the Commerce Committee, who objected to a vote from the Senate floor.
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The one-week extension faced some controversy of its own. Senators delayed the bill briefly as they worked to get a commitment for future votes on unrelated legislation. Two online safety bills were the subject of negotiations, according to Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA), the chairwoman of the Commerce Committee, as was an expiring affordable internet program.
“Everybody said, ‘I want my time on the floor!’” she said, noting that a hotline went out to gauge support but that any member could object.
Washington, D.C
In D.C.’s Ward 8, election centers on experience versus new leadership
On a sweltering Wednesday afternoon near D.C.’s Anacostia neighborhood, D.C. Council member Trayon White Sr. (D-Ward 8), campaigning for reelection, apologized to a group of local business owners for arriving late to his own meet-and-greet. He had come from a memorial service for a 15-year-old girl who was shot and killed last month. In 90 minutes, he would need to pivot once again to finalize his council committee’s budget recommendations.
Washington, D.C
How the Luneta inspired US capital—and other PH links to Washington
WASHINGTON, DC — Unknown to many, a picturesque national park in Washington, DC that features the iconic Tidal Basin and is widely known for its cherry blossom trees was inspired by Luneta Park in Manila.
US first lady Helen Taft, who had lived in the Philippines while her husband William Howard Taft Luneta Park was civilian governor general in the Philippines, wanted to have a public space in DC similar to Luneta where people could meet for social gatherings. Her husband was elected president of the United States in 1908.
Philippine and US ties first arose after Spain ceded its long-standing colony of the archipelago in 1898. It remained an American colony until the United States recognized its independence in 1946. Years later, Manila would become Washington’s oldest ally in the Indo-Pacific.
READ: Need for mini Luneta parks
During their time in the Philippines in early 1900, the Tafts spent most of their evenings at Luneta Park listening to the popular Philippine Constabulary Band, which would later be invited to Taft’s inauguration parade in DC and the launch of the park itself, the West Potomac Park.
“That Manila could lend anything to Washington may be a surprise to some persons, but the Luneta is an institution whose usefulness to society in the Philippine capital is not to be overestimated,” the first lady wrote in her memoir, “Recollection of Full Years,” published in 1914.
Connected histories
For Georgetown University professor Dr. Erwin Tiongson, a Nueva Vizcaya native now based in DC who describes himself as a community historian, this is just one of the many ways that illustrate how the Philippines and the United States in the US capital are deeply intertwined.
Tiongson and his family have spent the last 12 years digging up these kinds of stories for a passion project—dubbed as the Philippines on the Potomac—but it has been turning into an educational resource that people may look back on.
Just last year, he published a book called “Philippine-American Heritage in Washington, D.C.” that contains some of those stories they have so far discovered that traces the connected histories of the two nations along the streets of DC, which are often overlooked and rarely found in textbooks.
“When we started this project 12 years ago, in a way, we started it because we wanted something for our children,” Tiongson recently told Filipino journalists participating in a reporting tour hosted by the US Embassy in Manila.
“If you want to characterize this project that we’ve been leading, it’s an effort to find our older home right here where we live …. We were trying to find traces of our older home right around us,” said the professor, who first moved to the United States in the 1990s.
PH ‘executive experience’
Tiongson said his discoveries over the years have made him realize how Philippines-US relations became “mutually transformative.”
“I was taught to believe that the US basically created institutions in the Philippines. The derogatory term is sometimes, ‘civilized the Philippines,’” he said.
But the United States did not start as a centralized government, and it was their colonial experience in the Philippines that taught them how to run a country, he pointed out.
“In fact, some people call the Civil War the war of the states because some states wanted certain things, including slavery, and others did not. Imagine if that was the context, and then suddenly, in 1901, they were running a country, our country, and they were also designing for the first time programs that would later become part of their federal government here,” he said.
“It’s not like they taught the Philippines how to create institutions in a way that colonial experience taught them how to create institutions. It’s been mutually transformative that many people acquired important experience in the Philippines, which they brought back to the US and changed their way of life here,” he added.
Taft, for instance, became president of the United States “on the strength of his executive experience in the Philippines,” he said.
Tiongson and his family have been conducting free walking tours around DC over the last decade for small groups of professionals, students and even diplomats, to guide them around sites that display the cultural heritage of Philippine-American ties.
“We do it pro bono, so we don’t charge anybody. It’s just to raise awareness of all these aspects of Philippine-American history,” he said.
As part of the tour, he brings along all the artifacts he has collected, from postcards to photos and other memorabilia to show his guests.
They have identified over 100 sites in DC that showcase those Philippine-American cultural links. For instance, the Bataan Street NW was to honor the Filipino and American troops captured on the Bataan Peninsula by the Japanese during World War II. Manuel Quezon, who served as president of the Commonwealth of the Philippines, lived on K Street where he was exiled. At the time, he was a nonvoting member of the US Congress as resident commissioner.
With the help of the Philippine Embassy in the United States, they have developed a map for a self-guided tour for these sites in DC.
There are many more stories waiting to be told. Tiongson estimated that his book only represents a fifth of all the stories he and his family have gathered over the years.
“The work never stops. I’ve been telling friends, I teach economics at Georgetown, if I retire now and if all I do is to write about everything I found, I will never finish. That’s how much materials we have,” he said.
Washington, D.C
Muriel Bowser Faces Scrutiny After Trips To Masters, Las Vegas
by Daniel Johnson
May 19, 2024
The mayor’s trips to the council of shopping centers have received scrutiny since at least 2017.
Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser faced criticism over a pair of trips that are alleged to have taken place using taxpayer money during the month of May. Earlier in May, Bowser took a trip to The Masters that appeared on her public calendar of events as a “sports and economic development visit.” According to the mayor’s spokesperson, the mayor and her team were invited to the event by two women who are chairing a Gallery Place/Chinatown Task Force.
As Fox 5 reports, one of those chairs is a CEO for EDENS, Jodie McLean. EDENS does millions of dollars in business in Washington, D.C. When Fox 5 reporter Stephanie Ramirez asked Bowser for additional clarification, she bristled, telling Ramirez, “We tried to be transparent, so I don’t know what questions you have that remain. We disclosed – I don’t know what questions you have that remain; we expect an invoice if it hasn’t – we haven’t received it yet from EDENS… I believe that the estimated costs were in the range of $5-$6,000 and that’s for air travel … per person.”
Bowser continued, defending her trip to Augusta National Golf Course, “Listen, voters have placed their trust in me to make the best decisions for the District for the last 15 years, including three elections as mayor. We made no secret about the fact that we make sports investments. We are the sports capital, and we are going to promote the District in every corner of the world, and that has been my experience as mayor.”
When Fox 5 asked about why the trip had so much secrecy around it, Bowser replied, “You know the reason why you know about the trip? Because it was on my public schedule. That’s not a secret.”
According to the Mayor’s public calendar, the next trip is described as an “economic mission” to the International Council of Shopping Centers in Las Vegas, which is being held from May 19-21. “On Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, Mayor Bowser will attend the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC) LAS VEGAS to attract retail to the District of Columbia. This economic mission is coordinated by the Washington, DC Economic Partnership, which has organized the District’s presence at ICSC since 2001.”
The mayor’s trips to the council of shopping centers have received scrutiny since at least 2017. At the time, D.C. Council member Jack Evans (D-Ward 2) defended the trip, telling the Washington Post, “It’s great. D.C. has changed, and we can make a different pitch than we could make years ago. It used to be that we had to tell them about the vision of what D.C. could become. Now, everybody wants to come open a store in the District. Frankly, if we weren’t here, we wouldn’t be doing our jobs.”
Others, like Monica Kamen, then the co-director of the DC Fair Budget Commission, believed there was a better way for taxpayer money to be allocated, given the gentrification concerns in the District. Kamen told the Post, “There’s been a lot of development in D.C. that has led to massive gentrification and a rise in the cost of living, and we need to be looking at how we continue development without further displacing people. A week before the budget vote, I would hope that that is where most of their focus was — on how to maximize spending for those in need . . . not in Las Vegas talking about giving away too many tax dollars to retailers.”
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