Georgia Tipsheet

An aide to Sen. Johnny Isakson said Tuesday the Republican could entertain a vote for background checks on firearm sales, but stressed that an earlier initiative would have to be “significantly reworked” before he could lend his support.

Isakson met Tuesday with a quartet of gun control advocates, one of whom, Piyali Cole of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, told a reporter at the Washington Post after the meeting that the senator was “definitely open to” supporting Machin-Toomey, the failed bipartisan push to tighten regulations on gun purchases.

“He said he is working with Machin [and] Toomey on a regular basis on the bill — he said he’s definitely having conversations with them,” Cole said. “When we asked him directly, is he going to vote for the Manchin-Toomey compromise bill when it’s reintroduced, he said he did not know but said he was definitely open to it.”

It wasn’t long before a spokeswoman for Isakson was soft-pedaling those comments, though the aide still left open the possibility the Georgian could break rank on the controversial proposal.

“The Machin-Toomey proposal would have to be significantly reworked before Sen. Isakson could even begin to consider it, as he has major concerns with its potential impact on private sales and privacy issues,” Isakson press secretary Lauren Culbertson told the Post after its initial story was filed. “He remains very committed to protecting the unfettered Second Amendment rights of Georgians and of all Americans.”

- James Richardson

Tuesday night saw the U.S. House of Representatives pass the Senate’s fiscal cliff deal, minus an amendment to include more spending cuts, but the bulk of Georgia’s congressional delegation refused their support for the measure.

Twelfth district Democrat John Barrow joined all 8 of his GOP colleagues in rejecting the cliff-averting deal, while Representatives Sanford Bishop, Hank Johnson and David Scott all tied their name to the measure. Representative John Lewis was home mourning the recent passing of his wife.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution’s Jim Galloway reported numerous statements from Georgia members regarding the rationales behind the votes.

For the Republicans’ part, the bulk of the complaints swirled around a desire to see more spending cuts included in any deal. Barrow, whose district overwhelmingly supported Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, struck a similar tone in declaring that the “mission” to “reform our tax code, cut spending and put us on a long-term path to deficit reduction” wasn’t accomplished at all.

Veteran House Republican Jack Kingston took a sarcastic tune on his ‘Nay’ vote, stating that he loved “senators so much that it’s hard to vote no on anything they do.”

The deal overwhelmingly passed the Senate with an 89-7 vote, including support from both Georgia Senators

With a final tally standing at 257-167, the controversial, far past the eleventh hour plan made it through the lower chamber with the support of 172 Democrats and 85 Republicans. It marks the first time a bill has passed without meeting Speaker John Boehner’s rule that legislation must be supported by a ‘majority of the majority.’

-Brandon Howell

U.S. Senators Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson this week demanded federal regulators forswear the adoption of a new, controversial green building program amid sustained industry and shareholder criticism.

In a letter to the General Services Administration, the two Georgians joined a bipartisan mix of 16 Senate lawmakers shredding the recently-tabled LEED green program administered by the U.S. Green Building Council, whose certification guidelines the agency had previously adopted. But new provisions banning the use of common plastics and chemicals has drawn unprecedented shareholder and legislative scrutiny.

“We are writing to express our concern with the recently released LEED 2012 standards set forth by the [USGBC ] and subsequent adoption of these standards by the [GSA],” the group wrote to acting agency chief Daniel Tangherlini. “The proposed LEED 2012 rating system is a significant department from the previous version of the green building rating system, and could undermine the goal of improving energy efficiency by eliminating the use of dozens approved materials and hundreds of proven products, all while driving up building costs to the taxpayer and threatening employment in our states.”

After weathering months-long criticism for its chemical avoidance policy–which directed builders, including would-be government contractors, to nix the use of polyvinyl chloride, or PVC plastic–USGBC officials made the surprise announcement earlier this month they would postpone internal balloting on the amended program.

Despite the expectation by some on the Hill that the group would reassess these controversial provisions in the interim, its top executives made clear they had no intensions to dilute the sting of the program when they again floated it for approval in June of next year.

If the case be that LEED’s designers refuse to tweak the program’s anti-chemical bent, the group of senators said, GSA must disavow it lest the government waste taxpayer money for a dubious environmental agenda.

“If USGBC does not reconsider its anti-chemical proposals in LEED 2012, we respectfully request that GSA stop using the LEED rating system, in factor or more performance based standards,” they wrote. “As the largest federal government agency that has adopted LEED, GSA’s adherence to LEED 2012 would amount to a federal endorsement of efficiency standards which preclude the use of some of the most effective techniques and materials.”

The letter echoes concerns expressed in an earlier missive, signed by seven Georgia House GOP’ers last month, in which the federal government’s adoption of LEED was said to be tantamount to “government sanctioning of an unscientific, arbitrary, and discriminatory program of materials selection.”

- Dome Confidential

Three of the Republican Party’s most prominent figures are wheels up today for Atlanta, where local GOP’ers will host a series of fundraisers to boost their respective campaign coffers.

Mitt Romney continues his aggressive fundraising clip, which outstripped Barack Obama’s haul last month, with a reception featuring former rival Newt Gingrich at the Cobb Galleria Center to be chased by a $50,000-per-plate event at a yet-to-be-disclosed private residence.

But the GOP presidential hopeful isn’t the only Bay Stater looking to break the Peach State piggy bank: U.S. Senators Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson are hosting an event to raise campaign funds for their colleague from Massachusetts, Scott Brown, whose reelection bid has already become a marquee Senate contest.

Not to be outstripped, the GOP state House caucus is feting their own political celebrity: Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, a man just two heartbeats away from the post Romney looks to hold.

- James Richardson

U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson is on something of a press blitz against the National Labor Relations Board, appearing today on Fox Business Network to criticize the group’s recent approval of a petition by the shoe department of New York City retailer Bergdorf Goodman to unionize.

Micro bargaining units–like Bergdorf’s newly-hatched union–provides for the unionization of small, distinct employee groups within a larger workplace. Business groups say it’s a transparent gift to labor unions, who can use the measure to shoehorn into new businesses through the support of a mere handful of workers.

Isakson’s Fox segment today comes on the heels of interviews the Georgian did last month with legacy conservative read Human Events (available only in print) and activist hub Breitbart.com, rapping the NLRB in both as a radical activist agency circumventing the Senate’s legislative authority.

- Dome Confidential

The National Labor Relations Board’s green lighting of a New York City micro bargaining unit has caught the ire of U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson, who said in an angry press release the group had coopted the legislative role of the Senate to “tip the scales in favor of labor unions.”

The NLRB shredded 50 years of labor law precedent when it approved last year the first micro union, through which as few as five workers may organize unique bargaining units. The board, designed in part to mediate disputes between labor and management, doubled down last week when it gave license to the shoe department of NYC retailer Bergdorf Goodman.

“There is not a problem as far as unions being able to organize, but there is a huge problem in that the labor board continue to try to overturn decades’ worth of labor laws that have served us well in order to tip the scales in favor of unions,” the Georgian said in the release. “The recent decision at Bergdorf Goodman is an example of the labor board’s doing through regulation what we ought to be doing through legislation on the floor of the Senate.”

Isakson, the ranking GOP’er on the Senate Subcommittee on Employment and Workplace Safety, was among the earliest and fiercest critics of the NLRB’s micro union decision. He introduced in November 2011 the Representative Fairness Act that would have blocked the controversial measure.

- Dome Confidential