Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Lawmakers Rush To Pass Stopgap Funding Bill Before Shutdown Deadline
Congress is racing to fund the government by Friday’s partial shutdown deadline, a heavy task that is bound to get weightier as Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) navigates growing anger in his conference over his handling of spending matters. The mad dash comes after congressional leaders rolled out a bipartisan deal to avert a shutdown over the weekend, settling on another two-set stopgap bill that would keep the government funded into March. The Senate is scheduled to hold the first procedural vote for the legislation late Tuesday. (Schnell, 1/16)
Democratic and Republican leaders in the U.S. Congress on Sunday unveiled a short-term spending bill that would avert a partial government shutdown and keep federal agencies operating into March. The agreement aims to avert short-term chaos and buy more time to craft the complex spending legislation that funds government activity. Government agencies that oversee transportation, housing, and other services are due to run out of funding by midnight on Friday and would have to scale back activity if new funding is not signed into law. (Sullivan and Morgan, 1/14)
In other health news from Capitol Hill —
When she arrived in Congress last year, Representative Anna Paulina Luna, a hard-right Republican from Florida, joined the rest of her party in staunchly opposing proxy voting, a practice adopted by House Democrats to allow for remote legislating during the pandemic. Then, in August, she gave birth to her first child and her perspective changed. Now, Ms. Luna is pressing to allow new mothers in Congress to stay away from Washington immediately after giving birth and designate a colleague to cast votes on the House floor on their behalf. (Karni, 1/16)
Rapper and singer Jelly Roll made an impassioned plea to Congress this week in support of a proposed bill to crack down on fentanyl, but experts and advocates say the growing crisis of fentanyl overdose deaths in the U.S. is a complicated problem to solve. Deaths blamed on fentanyl have exploded over the last decade as the synthetic opioid has reached virtually every corner of the country, and officials have called for greater action to both curb the flow of illegally manufactured fentanyl smuggled into the U.S., and address addiction. (Santucci, 1/13)
