But the Assembly member behind the measure — Ed Chau, D-Monterey Park — says his bill, AB2356, will be carefully crafted to only allow for the expulsion of students who send sexually explicit or nude photos electronically “with the purpose or effect of humiliating or harassing a pupil.” Chau emphasized that existing laws on cyberbullying and revenge porn were not adequate to deal with the “sexting” problem, which experts have said for years leads to mental health issues among teens.

The law would not apply to “sexts” sent from student to student while away from school, leading critics to wonder about its effectiveness. But that wasn’t the only objection raised to Chau’s bill, as The Los Angeles Times reported:

Catherine Hill, vice president for research at the association, said she would prefer an approach to sexting that allows the students to address their actions while remaining on campus and receiving counseling. …

 

Free speech advocates have been skeptical of efforts to address cyberbullying.

 

The California bill concerns Sameer Hinduja, a criminal justice professor at Florida Atlantic University and co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center, which keeps track of states with sexting laws.

 

His qualms stem in part from the law’s assumption that administrators can determine the intended purpose of the material students send. The bill, he said, “seems to assume that identifying intent is easy. And it’s totally not in these types of situations.

 

“I would be afraid that we’re starting to infringe on civil liberties.”

Boy charged with sexually exploiting himself

Twenty states have laws on “sexting.” However, there is growing concern that this prosecution-centric approach to a practice that shocks older generations but seems routine for some young people punishes and stigmatizes minors.

Writing in 2014 for Reason.com, Lenore Skenazy detailed cases in Minnesota and Virginia in which authorities considered treating teens who swapped “sexts” as sex offenders whom the community needed to be protected from.

In September, an unsigned post on Techdirt.com explored a North Carolina case in which a 16-year-old boy who sent a lewd photo was charged with sexual exploitation of a minor — himself.

But Chau insists that he is aware of such dubious uses of sexting laws and will be able to craft a law that makes distinctions between the ways lewd photos are shared and the intent of those sharing such images.

A hearing has not yet been scheduled on his bill, and the Legislature has yet to do a formal analysis of the measure.

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies are accused of shooting a mentally ill teenager in the street in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court just two weeks after the county

The lawsuit also comes on the heels of an agreement by the department to release deputy-involved shooting records to the county’s Office of Inspector General.

The lawsuit claims Fernando Escobedo, 19, was shot and killed by deputies on Nov. 30, 2014.  Escobedo was known to the department through past brushes with the law. Shortly before his death, his mother had sought help from the Sheriff’s Department and explained his mental health problems, the complaint says.

A video of the shooting obtained by CalWatchdog appears to show Escobedo running from the home of his mother, Hilda Alvarez, away from two squad cars parked in front of the home and into the path of two other arriving squad cars.

An officer comes out of the last car and points his weapon at Escobedo, who turns and runs away before dropping to the ground. The video is embedded at the bottom of the page. 

From the complaint:

“Ms. Alvarez immediately heard three gunshots and yelled ‘don’t shoot.’ One of the officers then hollered ‘watch your crossfire.’ Immediately thereafter, four more shots were fired at Mr. Escobedo.”

Deputies told local media at the time of the incident that Escobedo charged an officer with a steak knife, which the family disputes. The video does not show the victim charging any of the officers.

The Sheriff’s office did not respond to emails and calls for comment.

The shooting is classified in the department’s database as a “hit shooting incident,” one of three in the month of November 2014. The shooter, unnamed in the lawsuit, was a 50-year-old Hispanic deputy who had been on the force for eight years according to Sheriff’s Department records. 

The records indicate that Escobedo’s alleged weapon was recovered. They also indicate Escobedo was under the influence and had a criminal history. Records show Escobedo was arrested in July 2014 and charged with possessing stolen property.

The “hit shooting incident” designation does not indicate a fatality. Since 2010, the department has recorded 175 hit shootings, and 91 of them resulted in a fatality, a review of records shows.

In about half of all shooting incidents involving L.A. County deputies since 2010, the suspect had a criminal history.

California counties have worked to open their records in the months since 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot in an altercation with a police officer outside St. Louis in 2014.

The San Diego County District Attorney’s office now lists the shootings it reviews. In Kern County, law enforcement and the district attorney’s office hammered out an agreement in July for enhanced review of officer-involved shootings. L.A. County has a database with all deputy-involved shootings. 

In the city of Richmond, a new police chief initiated policies to reduce police shootings, including reviews of all uses of force and providing officers with Tasers and pepper spray to be used as an alternative to a firearm.

California’s law enforcement community has been embroiled in controversies over excessive force, including shootings, for decades.

The violence reached a flash point in the late 90s. A gang unit in the Rampart division of the Los Angeles Police Department was plagued by beatings of suspects and officer-involved shootings.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, in particular, has in the past five years battled with rogue officers.

Three deputies were found guilty in June, 2011 of the beating of a jailhouse visitor. In November, the department paid $8.85 million to the family of Alfredo Montalvo, who was shot by deputies after a brief car chase in 2009.

In October, 2015, a man suspected of driving under the influence was shot. Deputies claimed he began to drive toward them after being pursued and cornered by squad cars. The deceased had no criminal history, according to records.

Since 2009, Los Angeles County has paid out $22 million in 43 wrongful death lawsuits as of July.

The Escobedo complaint alleges that the shooters were not properly trained in dealing with the mentally ill.

“The department fails, refuses and neglects to keep a centralized database of those reported to it as suspected of being mentally ill,” the lawsuit claims. “Neither [past sheriff John] Scott nor [current sheriff Jim] McDonnell provided training necessary for officers faced with the challenge of bringing such people safely under the custody and control of patrol officers, thus placing the mentally ill … at greater risk of death at the time of arrest or when officers seek to question them.”

Norm Pattis, the Connecticut-based lawyer handling the lawsuit for Escobedo’s mother, did not return calls or emails.

Legislation passed in September requires law enforcement officers in California to get more training in handling mental health cases.

The bill requires the state provide at least 15 hours of basic training in dealing with the mentally ill, up from six hours.

Video of Nov. 30, 2014 shooting of Fernando Escobedo:

The fact that about 23 percent of state residents are barely getting by has helped fuel the push for a much higher minimum wage and prompted renewed interest in affordable housing programs. It’s also put the focus on regional economic disparities, especially the fact that Silicon Valley and San Francisco are the primary engine of state prosperity.

While the tech boom and the vast increase in housing prices it has triggered in the Bay Area are national news, prompting think pieces and thoughtful analyses, the poverty picture in the state’s largest population center isn’t covered nearly as fully. Although the fact is plain in Census Bureau data, it’s not commonly understood that Los Angeles County is the capital of U.S. poverty. A 2013 study by the Public Policy Institute of California and the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality based on 2011 data found 27 percent of the county’s 10 million residents were impoverished, the highest figure in the state and the highest of any large metro area in the U.S. The study questioned long-held assumptions about poverty being worst in rural areas.

But there are reasons to think the rate in Los Angeles County is significantly higher than the 27 percent reported in 2013.

The first is that many surveys of poverty struggle to account for undocumented immigrants, who often work for cash and don’t show up in wage surveys. The Pew Research Service in 2009 estimated that undocumented individuals face poverty rates “nearly double” those of Americans in general. Los Angeles County has by far the most undocumented immigrants, estimated by PPIC to be 815,000 in 2013.

The second is that the cost of housing has surged in Los Angeles County over the past four years even as wages have stagnated. The average rent of an apartment countywide is expected to be $1,800 by year’s end, with the biggest percentage jump in poorer communities in the San Fernando Valley.

Poverty-related stress takes heavy toll

A summer report by Southern California Public Radio laid out a grim picture of the toll this mass poverty takes on the young.

New research shows the mere fact of being poor can affect kids’ brains, making it difficult for them to succeed in school.

 

Los Angeles public schools — where more than 80 percent of students live in poverty — illustrate the challenges for these students. …

 

Children living in poor neighborhoods are more likely to suffer traumatic incidents, like witnessing or being the victims of shootings, parental neglect or abuse. They also struggle with pernicious daily stressors, including food or housing insecurity, overcrowding and overworked or underemployed, stressed-out parents.

 

Untreated, researchers have found these events compound, affecting many parts of the body. Studies show chronic stress can change the chemical and physical structures of the brain.

 

“You see deficits in your ability to regulate emotions in adaptive ways as a result of stress,” said Dr. Cara Wellman, a professor of neuroscience and psychology at Indiana University.

 

Dendrites, which look like microscopic fingers, stretch off each brain cell to catch information.  Wellman’s studies in mice show that chronic stress causes these fingers to shrink, changing the way the brain works. She found deficiencies in the pre-frontal cortex – the part of the brain needed to solve problems, which is crucial to learning.

 

Other researchers link chronic stress to a host of cognitive effects, including trouble with attention, concentration, memory and creativity.

SCPR had a follow-up report that showed Los Angeles schools simply didn’t have the resources to help affected students in a comprehensive way.

Introduced last year, Senate Bill 11, the first, has begun to gather steam as lawmakers have fleshed out the legislation with more specific provisions. The bill would mandate a basic training course on how to recognize and de-escalate conflict involving “persons with mental illness or intellectual disability who are in crisis,” upping substantially the hours of education required for cops.

“The bill would require that this evidence-based behavioral health classroom training course be 20 hours long and be in addition to the basic training course’s current hour requirement,” according to the language of SB11, which would also require ongoing updates to the course as part of so-called “perishable skills training.”

SB11 has taken on a new relevance as the Senate Select Committee on Mental Health held a special hearing in L.A.’s Exposition park. As the Sacramento Bee reported, lawmakers called on “current and former law enforcement officers from the CHP, the San Diego Police Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, as well as representatives of Disability Rights California and the National Alliance on Mental Illness.” State Sen. Holly Mitchell, D-Los Angeles, took the opportunity to voice her support for SB11, along with SB29, a similar bill initially introduced, like SB11, by state Sen. Jim Beall, D-San Jose.

A pattern of shootings

After a brutal CHP beating of a mentally ill 51-year-old woman this July, advocates have been up in arms against what they identify as a pattern of police abuse. Those tensions spilled over as, over the past two months, L.A. saw cops shoot dead two homeless men. Both Charly Keunang of Skid Row and Brendon Glenn of Venice were “combative, but not armed,” NBC Los Angeles reported. “Keunang had been diagnosed with mental illness while in prison. Glenn suffered from alcohol abuse, according to those who knew him. Both cases remain under investigation.”

A contentious town hall meeting in L.A.’s Venice neighborhood that focused on Glenn’s death drew a powerful wave of criticism as Police Chief Charlie Beck and Mayor Eric Garcetti both opted not to attend. “Several people who attended Thursday night’s meeting faulted Beck and Mayor Garcetti for not being there,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “Beck rebuffed the criticism of the mayor, saying it was ‘unfair’ because previous mayors hadn’t attended similar events in the past.”

Although California police face thousands upon thousands of situations involving the mentally ill, only a relative handful have recently culminated in police shootings. Nevertheless, the pattern of outcomes that has emerged this year put the California Highway Patrol and the Los Angeles Police Department on the defensive.

“Every year, the Los Angeles Police Department responds to some 14,000 calls for service involving mentally disturbed individuals,” LAPD Lieutenant Brian Bixler, officer in charge of the Crisis Response Support Section, told NBC Los Angeles. The share of ensuing events involving police violence and mental health problems has been massive, the network reported.

“Encounters with the mentally ill, or those affected by substance abuse, account for a disproportionate number of the uses of force by the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department” — around 40 percent, as Sheriff Jim McDonnell told the Select Committee.

A statewide challenge

Observers have warned that law enforcement troubles with mentally ill individuals have arisen in part because of California’s failure to adequately house them. According to the Marin Independent Journal, in 1960, “California had a population of 15 million and 37,000 mental hospital beds; by 2010, the state’s population had grown to 37 million and there were only 4,000 mental hospital beds.”

In 2004 California voters passed Proposition 63, based on the promise it would tax the rich to help the state’s mentally ill population. But 10 years later, while it’s been successful in taking about $10 billion from top earners, state officials are largely clueless about whether the money has been well spent.

The problem is a “dilapidated, antiquated” data collection and processing system, according to testimony at a recent hearing of the state watchdog agency the Little Hoover Commission.

The proposition known as the Mental Health Services Act increased the tax on personal income over $1 million by 1 percentage point, affecting an estimated 25,000-30,000 people. In the 2007-08 fiscal year, the MHSA tax brought in $1.5 billion; but the Great Recession shrank that to $849 million in 2011-12, the last year closely scrutinized. A total of about $9.5 billion had been allocated to counties through 2013-14.

The problem is that no one knows whether the money has actually helped the mentally ill. Karen Baylor, deputy executive director for the California Department of Health Care Services, which is in charge of collecting the data, isn’t sure.

“I think the question is: Do we know that these dollars that translate into services make people better?” she told the commission. “I think we do have data and know how the money is being spent. Do we know the efficacy of these programs? No, we don’t.”

Lack of data

Earlier in the hearing, several mental health advocates expressed their frustration at the lack of data.

“And we certainly understand the frustration,” said Baylor. “The act has been around for 10 years and we don’t have any evaluation, and we understand that. We just became involved with this in the last year. So I can’t explain to you what the former Department of Mental Health did because we weren’t there.”

(Under Assembly Bill 102, a reorganization  passed in 2011, the DMH was replaced by the Mental Health Services Division of the California Department of Health Care Services.)

Her testimony came more than a year after an Aug. 2013 state audit criticized the lack of oversight of county mental health programs by the DMH and by the Mental Health Services Oversight and Accountability Commission.

“We found no evidence that Mental Health performed on-site reviews to ensure that county assertions about their compliance with MHSA [Prop. 63] requirements and use of funds were accurate and proper,” the audit said. “None of the entities charged with evaluating the effectiveness of MHSA programs – Mental Health, the Accountability Commission, or a third entity – have undertaken serious efforts to do so.

“Mental Health either did not always obtain certain data or did not ensure counties reported the required data. The Accountability Commission did not adopt a framework for evaluation until recently – more than eight years after the passage of the MHSA.

“Each of the four county departments we reviewed used different and inconsistent approaches in assessing and reporting on their MHSA programs, and the county departments rarely developed specific objectives to assess the effectiveness of the programs.”

Mentally ill

The U.S. Department of Health estimated in 2009 that 4.8 percent of adults in the country are seriously mentally ill, according to the audit. That equates to more than 1.8 million seriously mentally ill Californians, who may – or may not – be benefiting from the $10 billion taken from California’s top earners.

“[S]ome counties could not effectively demonstrate through their processes that their MHSA programs are achieving the stated intent,” the audit said. “[They] rarely developed specific objectives to assess the effectiveness of program services. Media reports have reflected skepticism about counties’ Innovation programs, some of which include acupuncture and yoga.”

Acupuncture and yoga are just the tip of the spending-waste iceberg, according to mental health advocate Mary Ann Bernard. In a California Progress Report article, “Legislative Fix Needed To Stop Waste of Millions Earmarked For Severe Mental Illness,” she wrote MHSA funds have been spent on:

“[E]lementary school programs about bullying, therapeutic gardening for unhappy Hmong refugees, horse therapy for troubled teens who are not mentally ill, a support group for gay and lesbian teens, parenting skills programs, a support program for unwed mothers, a hip hop car wash, homework help programs for non-mentally ill students, yoga and ‘Soul Chi’ for the stressed, among other things.

“These may be fine programs, but they are hardly ‘effective’ and ‘successful’ at preventing or shortening the duration of ‘severe mental illness,’ as required by law.”

Mental health funds also have been spent on sweat lodges for Native Americans and massage chairs for students, according to the Associated Press.

Prop. 63 has created “a cottage industry of consultants earning up to $200 an hour, as well as a host of new programs that in many cases are only loosely linked to prevention, treatment and recovery,” reported a Bay Area News Group examination of the spending.

The article quoted Prop. 63 co-author Rose King, “The state of California clearly did not comply with the law, and they did not keep and honor the contract with the voters. It’s a corruption of purpose, and it’s a boondoggle for consultants and entrepreneurs at the expense of core services.”

Helped

But amid the waste of tax dollars there also are people being helped. A Mental Health Services Oversight and Accountability Commission press release summarized a July 2014 study by the UCLA Center for Healthier Children, Families and Communities:

“Hundreds of thousands of Californians at risk of or with early symptoms of mental illness are being helped by Proposition 63’s Prevention and Early Intervention (PEI) programs …. [C]hildren, youth, young adults and the elderly are experiencing reduced homelessness, school dropout rates and unemployment through PEI programs.”

MHSOAC Chairman Richard Van Horn asked the Little Hoover Commission to help obtain more funding from the Legislature to provide better oversight of county mental health spending.

“The issue is that we have not had a data system that is modern,” he said. “We have legacy systems. Legacy systems can drive you to the ground because you can’t get the information out once you put it in. We need to have a system statewide in which counties, agencies can talk to each and all can talk to the state. The state can talk back to them. This needs to be a fully interactive system.

“That is an expensive proposition. The fact that you have got 0.1 percent [of MHSA expenditures] going to evaluation at the state level in a $6 billion system is sheer craziness. But that’s what we’re stuck with at the moment. You guys have a different kind of political clout than we do. And we need your help in making this happen.

“This is a learning process. We are way ahead of other states. Everybody is looking at California because we had the brass to pass this thing 10 years ago. Now we have to put the proper infrastructure in so that not only will we know the results [of mental health programs], but be able to communicate those results.”

Little Hoover Commissioner David Beier agreed it’s up to the state Legislature to fix the oversight problem.

“The person who has the money is going to dictate whether there’s going to be compliance,” he said. “With an initiative it defaults to the Legislature. In this, legislative oversight is the key component to driving change. They need to be a key participant. They have the purse strings. I would hope that one of the things that would come out of this [hearing] is a sense of urging the Legislature to do a focused job of oversight.”

Two months before Californians go to the polls to choose a governor, the state’s top elections official tearfully acknowledged Friday that she has been consumed by a “debilitating” depression that has often kept her away from the office.

Secretary of State Debra Bowen, who oversees statewide voting, told The Times that she has a history of depression and has moved out of the two-story country home she owns with her husband. She now resides in a trailer park on the outskirts of Sacramento. …

The secretary said she is receiving professional help, is comforted by support from friends and has not been hospitalized. She described her new living accommodations as a refuge, characterizing the mobile home park as one containing “extended-stay cottages.” …

Her trailer at Arden Acres has cracked windowsills, and some windows have cardboard behind the glass to block the sun. Behind it is a storage yard with a giant, rusting shipping container pressed against the other side of the fence. On Thursday, her state-issued Buick was parked outside, the back seats and front passenger seat full of cardboard boxes brimming with clothing and household goods.

Problems festered, never got solved

This may fully or partly explain her utter diffidence as secretary of state over the past seven and a half years. As the LAT story noted …

She has been criticized periodically for being distracted on the job, most recently during her 2010 reelection campaign. Republican challenger Damon Dunn noted then that the time it took her office to process business filings had more than tripled. (Bowen said a backlog was due to budget cuts.)

In addition, a project that now allows online voter registration was four years behind schedule. Bowen had said it takes time to find the right contractor.

Open-government advocates bashed her for failing to upgrade California’s online campaign finance reporting system, which is antiquated and unwieldy.

‘Embarrassing shortcomings and backlogs’

Her years of disinterest in trying to minimize business paperwork delays produced a harsh rebuke from the Sac Bee edit page in March 2013:

If Texas can process an application to form a limited liability company in five days, even less if the registration application is filed online, why does it take California six weeks? In California, home to Silicon Valley, the most sophisticated collection of high-tech companies in the world, why can’t the state process business filings online?

Why does a business owner in Los Angeles have to deliver papers to the secretary of state’s office in Sacramento to get expedited over-the-counter service? Why doesn’t the secretary of state have counter service in Los Angeles or Fresno or San Francisco?

California Secretary of State Debra Bowen blames state budget cuts for the many embarrassing shortcomings and backlogs in her office. Lack of money should not have been a problem. After all, the business portal side of Bowen’s office – the place where entrepreneurs seeking to form corporations or limited liability companies or partnerships file their paperwork – is entirely fee-based. It’s supposed to be self-supporting. The businesses pay for the cost of the operation.

In fact, California charges among the highest fees of any state in the nation for what appears to be perhaps the worst service, as a limited survey by The Bee’s Jon Ortiz suggests.

I sure didn’t see this coming. In 2006, I voted for Bowen over appointed Republican Secretary of State Bruce McPherson after being put off by McPherson’s hauteur and arrogance in an interview.

Mature, persistent leadership during energy crisis

It wasn’t just McPherson’s manner. I also was impressed by Bowen’s persistence, patience and maturity during the state’s bizarre 2000-01 energy crisis, the fiasco that so damaged then-Gov. Gray Davis that it paved the way for his 2003 recall. Bowen, a Redondo Beach Democrat, was chair of the state Senate’s Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee. In early 2000, after hearings by her committee, she warned that California’s faux energy dergulation bill of 1996 was going haywire.

But Davis was more interested in posturing and blaming utilities and power suppliers than acting decisively to address both soaring energy costs and supply limits that produced regional blackouts. He was such a dithering dolt that in December 2000, 75-year-old former Secretary of State Warren Christopher — an Edison board member — harangued him at a private meeting about needing to figure out the basics of public leadership.

Bowen played an important role in the cleanup, especially when she resisted attempts to rush through a flawed fix. As she noted, it was the rush to pass the faux deregulation bill in 1996 that created the mess.

I wasn’t just observing from afar. I was then a government and politics reporter for The Orange County Register, which sent me to Sacramento in late January and early Februrary 2001 to bolster our coverage as the crisis crested. In a Capitol dominated by a dilettante (Davis) and a wack job (Senate President John Burton), Bowen stood out.

Based on her performance in the Legislature, I never expected her to disappear after she got a promotion. But that’s pretty much what happened.

Missing-person report: SOS for the SoS

In May, when I met Pete Peterson, the brainy, impressive GOP reformer who hopes to succeed Bowen in November’s election, I told him how surprised I was that Bowen was such a fiasco in statewide office. I said someone should file a missing person report for the secretary of state.

Peterson laughed, and so did I. But I wouldn’t tell such a joke now. I hope Bowen gets the help she needs — and that California finally gets the great secretary of state that it needs and deserves.

Peterson could be that good. He’s already won a long list of endorsements from newspapers left and right. Don’t hold the LAT’s applause against him.

The Democratic supermajority approved a wide range of anti-gun legislation. There were several bans on items such as magazine repair kits, detachable magazines and lead ammunition. Other new laws aim to make gun ownership more onerous. And some legislation was oddly specific, such as Sen. Mark Leno’s bill that would require county approval for gun shows to be held at the Cow Palace in Daly City.

Given that Gov. Jerry Brown is a relative moderate within the Democratic Party on gun rights, it’s unclear which bills will be vetoed. But political observers expect at least some of the new language coming out of Sacramento to be signed into law. It’s a bad time for gun enthusiasts in California.

In Washington, D.C., though, the climate on gun control couldn’t be any more different.

The week began with the tragic shooting at the Navy Yard, less than a mile from Capitol Hill. A government contractor, suffering from a litany of psychiatric disorders and armed with a shotgun, indiscriminately murdered 12 people before being gunned down by law enforcement. The shooting shocked Washington and renewed calls for something to be done to prevent more mass shootings.

And although several news outlets, including the Associated Press, incorrectly reported that the shooter was armed with an AR-15, when he really used a shotgun and handguns, no serious legislator called for a national assault weapons ban. There wasn’t a movement to ban shotguns, and no major press conferences were held demanding magazine size restrictions. No one suggested a national ban on lead ammunition.

Underlying causes

Rather, congressmen—understanding the need for a bipartisan solution—have since focused on addressing the underlying cause of mass shootings: mental health.

On Tuesday, leaving the U.S. Senate floor after a vote, South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham told reporters, “I don’t think anything’s changed about guns.”

Rather, mental health was the real underlying issue.

“The mental health component seems to me the place where the Congress could do the most good,” he said. “This is a dicey area. If you seek counseling, should you not ever be able to buy a gun? We have due process for people who come upon bad times.”

Across the aisle, in another chamber, Rep. Ron Barber, D-Ariz., has introduced legislation to confront those issues.

Following the shooting, Barber released a statement:

“Barber has introduced the bipartisan Mental Health First Aid Act to increase public awareness of mental illness symptoms and services available by training teachers, students, firefighters, police officers, emergency services workers and others.”

And now Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., and Mark Begich, D-Ark., are bringing to the Senate their own version of Barber’s bill. It will likely pass both chambers, and President Barack Obama is expected to sign the bill into law.