House Releases $81 Billion Supplemental

Posted on December 19, 2017December 19, 2017

Totaling $81 billion, the supplemental spending bill (HR 4667) released Monday evening is $37 billion more than the $44 billion the Trump Administration requested in mid-November. As supplemental appropriations, the money is designated as emergency spending, which does not require offsets under congressional budget rules. The White House included a list of offsets, which can be found here.

If approved as is, this latest disaster aid bill would bring the emergency spending total to $132.75 billion this year — significantly surpassing the $60 billion spent in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy and the $120 billion appropriated after Hurricane Katrina.

The bill includes:

$27.6 billion for the Federal Emergency Management Agency
$26.1 billion for Community Development Block Grants for disaster recovery
$12.1 billion for the Army Corps of Engineers
$3.8 billion for agriculture recovery
$2.9 billion to assist schools in affected areas to rebuild and refurbish
$1.6 billion for the Small Business Administration disaster loan program
$1.5 billion to repair military facilities
$1.4 billion for damages to federal highways
$600 million in economic development grants

The bill includes language that would allow individuals who have lost property to wildfires to deduct damage costs on their taxes, would remove the penalty for withdrawing money from a retirement account and would incentivize donations to people and regions rebuilding after wildfires.

House leadership has not yet announced whether the supplemental aid package will be added to the stopgap spending bill (H J Res 124) heading to the House Rules Committee on today and the House floor after that.

Current stopgap funding expires Dec. 22.

DHS Pick Confirmed

Posted on December 6, 2017

The Senate confirmed yesterday by a vote of 62 – 37 Kirstjen Nielsen to lead the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). She replaces John Kelly, who resigned from that position to become the White House Chief of Staff. She served most recently as the White House Deputy Chief of Staff under Kelly. She also worked for Kelly before joining the White House staff as his chief of staff at DHS.

Read more about her here, here, and here.

Third Travel Ban Partially Ok’ed by Federal Court

Posted on November 14, 2017

On Monday, a panel of judges in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals allowed a version of the Trump Administration’s third travel ban to take effect. The proposed ban, which was originally slated to take effect last month, sought to bar many kinds of travelers from eight countries, including those from Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen. Before itcould take effect, suits were filed against the Administration in the Fourth Circuit and the Ninth Circuit.

In their decision, the judges ruled that the government could implement the ban but not on those individuals with “a bona fide relationship with a person or an entity in the United States.” The appeal in the Fourth Circuit has not yet been heard.

New Nominee to Lead HHS Named

Posted on November 13, 2017

The Trump Administration announced today that it intends to nominate Alex Azar as the next Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS). Azar served at HHS under the George W. Bush Administration from 2001 to 2007, first as general counsel and deputy secretary. He served in senior leadership roles at Lilly USA between 2007 and late 2016.

Tax Cuts and Jobs Act

Posted on November 2, 2017November 2, 2017

The House Republican Leadership unveiled their much-awaited Tax Cuts and American Jobs act.

At first glance, the measure would:

cut the corporate tax rate to 20%;
reduce the seven individual tax brackets into four;
nearly double the standard deduction to $24K (married), $18,300 (head of household), and 12,200 (single);
increase the child care tax credit to $1,600 (from $1000);
change the mortgage interest deduction to apply to house loans up to $500,000 on new home purchases while existing homes would be grandfathered;
repeal the student-loan interest deduction;
private universities with assets exceeding $100,000 a student would pay a new 1.4% excise tax on their net investment income; and
businesses would no longer be able to deduct entertainment expenses, though today’s rules for business meals would remain.

The charitable deduction will not change, and the tax provisions related to 401(k)s are unchanged.

The bill text is here.

A section-by-section of the measure is here.

Federal Relations is still going thought the measure and will continue to provide updates.