Michael Makoto Honda is an American politician and former educator. A member of the Democratic Party, he served in Congress from 2001 to 2017.
The Contract with America was a legislative agenda advocated for by the Republican Party during the 1994 congressional election campaign. Written by Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey, and in part using text from former President Ronald Reagan's 1985 State of the Union Address, the Contract detailed the actions the Republicans promised to take if they became the majority party in the United States House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years. Many of the Contract's policy ideas originated at The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
Fortney Hillman Stark Jr., known as Pete Stark, was an American businessman and politician who was a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1973 to 2013. A Democrat from California, Stark's district—California's 13th congressional district during his last two decades in Congress—was in southwestern Alameda County and included Alameda, Union City, Hayward, Newark, San Leandro, San Lorenzo, and Fremont, as well as parts of Oakland and Pleasanton. At the time he left office in 2013, he was the fifth most senior Representative, as well as sixth most senior member of Congress overall. He was also the dean of California's 53-member Congressional delegation, and the only openly atheist member of Congress.
In legislative procedure, a rider is an additional provision added to a bill or other measure under the consideration by a legislature, which may or may not have much, if any, connection with the subject matter of the bill.
The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985 (COBRA) is a law passed by the U.S. Congress on a reconciliation basis and signed by President Ronald Reagan that, among other things, mandates an insurance program which gives some employees the ability to continue health insurance coverage after leaving employment. COBRA includes amendments to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA). The law deals with a great variety of subjects, such as tobacco price supports, railroads, private pension plans, emergency department treatment, disability insurance, and the postal service, but it is perhaps best known for Title X, which amends the Internal Revenue Code and the Public Health Service Act to deny income tax deductions to employers for contributions to a group health plan unless such plan meets certain continuing coverage requirements. The violation for failing to meet those criteria was subsequently changed to an excise tax.
Stark Law is a set of United States federal laws that prohibit physician self-referral, specifically a referral by a physician of a Medicare or Medicaid patient to an entity for the provision of designated health services ("DHS") if the physician has a financial relationship with that entity.
An omnibus bill is a proposed law that covers a number of diverse or unrelated topics. Omnibus is derived from Latin and means "to, for, by, with or from everything". An omnibus bill is a single document that is accepted in a single vote by a legislature but packages together several measures into one or combines diverse subjects.
The Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990 is a United States statute enacted pursuant to the budget reconciliation process to reduce the United States federal budget deficit. The Act included the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990 which established the "pay-as-you-go" or "PAYGO" process for discretionary spending and taxes.
Budget reconciliation is a special parliamentary procedure of the United States Congress set up to expedite the passage of certain federal budget legislation in the Senate. The procedure overrides the Senate's filibuster rules, which may otherwise require a 60-vote supermajority for passage. Bills described as reconciliation bills can pass the Senate by a simple majority of 51 votes or 50 votes plus the vice president's as the tie-breaker. The reconciliation procedure also applies to the House of Representatives, but it has minor significance there, as the rules of the House of Representatives do not have a de facto supermajority requirement. Because of greater polarization, gridlock, and filibustering in the Senate in recent years, budget reconciliation has come to play an important role in how the United States Congress legislates.
The Patient Self-Determination Act (PSDA) was passed by the United States Congress in 1990 as an amendment to the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990. Effective on December 1, 1991, this legislation required many hospitals, nursing homes, home health agencies, hospice providers, health maintenance organizations (HMOs), and other health care institutions to provide information about advance health care directives to adult patients upon their admission to the healthcare facility. This law does not apply to individual physicians.
Rust v. Sullivan, 500 U.S. 173 (1991), was a case in the United States Supreme Court that upheld Department of Health and Human Services regulations prohibiting employees in federally funded family-planning facilities from counseling a patient on abortion. The department had removed all family planning programs that involving abortions. Physicians and clinics challenged this decision within the Supreme Court, arguing that the First Amendment was violated due to the implementation of this new policy. The Supreme Court, by a 5–4 verdict, allowed the regulation to go into effect, holding that the regulation was a reasonable interpretation of the Public Health Service Act, and that the First Amendment is not violated when the government merely chooses to "fund one activity to the exclusion of another."
A crisis pregnancy center (CPC), sometimes called a pregnancy resource center (PRC) or a pro-life pregnancy center, is a type of nonprofit organization established by anti-abortion groups primarily to persuade pregnant women against having an abortion. In the United States, CPCs that qualify as medical clinics may also provide pregnancy testing, sonograms, and other services, while many others operate without medical licensing under varying degrees of regulation.
The Balanced Budget Act of 1997 was an omnibus legislative package enacted by the United States Congress, using the budget reconciliation process, and designed to balance the federal budget by 2002. This act was enacted during Bill Clinton's second term as president.
In U.S. politics, the Hyde Amendment is a legislative provision barring the use of federal funds to pay for abortion, except to save the life of the woman, or if the pregnancy arises from incest or rape. Before the Hyde Amendment took effect in 1980, an estimated 300,000 abortions were performed annually using federal funds.
Abortion in South Africa is legal by request when the pregnancy is under 13 weeks. It is also legal to terminate a pregnancy between week 13 and week 20 under the following conditions: the continued pregnancy would significantly affect the pregnant person's social or economic circumstances, the continued pregnancy poses a risk of injury to the pregnant person's physical or mental health, there is a substantial risk that the foetus would suffer from a severe physical or mental abnormality, or the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest. If the pregnancy is more than 20 weeks, a termination is legal if the foetus' life is in danger, or there is a likelihood of serious birth defects.
In the United States, sex education is taught in two main forms: comprehensive sex education and abstinence-only as part of the Adolescent Family Life Act, or AFLA. Comprehensive sex education is also called abstinence-based, abstinence-plus, abstinence-plus-risk-reduction, and sexual risk reduction sex education. This approach covers abstinence as a choice option, but also informs adolescents about age of consent and the availability of contraception and techniques to avoid contraction of sexually transmitted infections. Every state within the U.S. has a mandated AIDS Education Program.
The Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 is a law that was enacted by the 111th United States Congress, by means of the reconciliation process, in order to amend the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The law includes the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act, which was attached as a rider.
The Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1987 was federal law that was enacted by the 100th United States Congress and signed into law by President Ronald Reagan.
Bowen v. Kendrick, 487 U.S. 589 (1988), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court upheld the constitutionality of the Adolescent Family Life Act.
The following is a list of efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which had been enacted by the 111th United States Congress on March 23, 2010.
