In an historic first for SME, both Josh Hoffman, SME's 2014-15 Congressional Fellow, and Kevin Ashley, SME's 2015-16 Fellow found themselves on the floor of the House of Representatives October 22 at the same time during debate on HR 1937, Rep. Mark Amodei's "The National Strategic and Critical Minerals Act of 2015."
Josh, who is now full time professional staff of the House Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources, was staff support on the House floor for Subcommittee Chair Doug Lamborn (R-CO), who introduced HR 1937 and lead the debate from the Majority side.
Kevin, who now works for Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL), was sitting with Hastings as a staff resource as the Congressman made counter arguments to the Majority position during debate and offered an amendment to HR 1937 that Kevin helped draft, but ultimately failed in the final vote.
Both Kevin (below to the right of Rep. Hastings) and Josh were seen on CSPAN behind their respective bosses as the debates went back and forth.
At the end of the day, HR 1937 passed the House by a vote of 254-177 and now may be considered in a Conference Committee with the Senate, if Sen. Murkowski's version of the critical minerals bill passes the upper Chamber as part of a larger Energy reform package.
Whatever the final vote today, I scored it SME 2-0 for our Congressional Fellows representing mining interests (and SME), even though Josh and Kevin are are on opposite sides of the aisle.