Next Week's Minor Issues; HR 1441, HR 2358, HR 2637

"minor" is being upgraded this week, seeing as there are no less than four appropriations bills up, and the House is not leaving until everything on the calendar is dealt with.

HR 1441, the "Stop Arming Iran Act", has sort of a funny story behind it. Obviously we have not sold any weapons directly to Iran for years and years. However, our spies recently discovered that Iran had about 15 F-14 fighter jets in their air force. Long story short, it turns out that they built those planes from the scrap that the US military had been selling to independent arms dealers that had made its way to Iran. A few national security types got all mad about it, and now this bill prohibits the sale of F-14s or F-14 components to anyone but American museums.

HR 2358, the "Native American $1 Coin Act", is congress's response to the overwhelming popularity of the $1 coin. They are going to reissue Sacajawea dollar coins, but this time they are going to do it right. Instead of an eagle on the back, there will be a representation of a famous Indian event, to be determined by the mint and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Also, the mint will begin an ad campaign to encourage businesses to give out dollar coins.

HR 2637, the "Child Labor Protection Act of 2007", is possibly the most critical issue facing our nation today. As we all know, America is facing a crisis in the form of exploited child laborers who are basically wage slaves and are regularly beaten to death by their cruel overseers. Oh, wait, that is not true. This bill raises the penalty for violating child labor laws from 10,000 to 11,000, and creates a new 50,000 penalty for causing debilitating injury. Violating a wage provision (not paying minimum wage, working too many hours, etc.) results in a 1,100 fine per offense, but only if it is a "repeated or willful" violation. Moral of the story; don't get willful with the Department of Labor!

Every other bill this week is an appropriations bill. ugh