Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
GOP And Dems Still Divided Over Budget Issues As Deadline For Passage Approaches
Lawmakers are returning to Capitol Hill to wrap up work on the budget, highway funding and taxes, an end-of-the-year stretch that will test the standing of Republican leaders like House Speaker Paul Ryan with the GOP's tea party wing and its anti-establishment presidential candidates. There are less than two weeks until a deadline to pass a $1.1 trillion catchall spending bill to fund Cabinet agencies and avoid a holiday season government shutdown. If the process doesn't go smoothly, a last-minute temporary funding measure would be required to keep the government open when the current stopgap funding measure expires Dec. 11. (Taylor, 11/30)
For Congress, the next two weeks are all about figuring out how to keep the government open. But that debate is about far more than Planned Parenthood and Syrian refugees. The federal government is running on a stop-gap funding bill that expires Dec. 11 because Congress has not yet passed legislation to fund federal agencies for 2016. ... Beyond the riders, Congress is now weighing changes in funding for hundreds of programs across the federal government, many of which have not been reconsidered in years. Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., who chairs the appropriations subcommittee that handles the departments of Labor and Health and Human Services, noted his panel boosted funding for National Institutes of Health to conduct research on Alzheimer's, anti-microbial resistance and other priorities, but it did so by cutting funding for the National Labor Relations Board and other programs more popular with Democrats. (Singer, 11/29)
Republicans have laced the spending bills with add-ons that take on Obama's health law, new environmental regulations, and the 2010 Dodd-Frank law tightening oversight of the financial services industry. If history is any guide, Obama and Democrats — whose votes will be needed to pass the catch-all spending bill — will ward off most of them. But lots of lower-tier issues are in play. ... What to know about riders and how they make it into legislation, or don't. (Taylor, 11/28)
