This Week: CHIP and Taxes

Posted on October 30, 2017October 30, 2017

The House and Senate are back this today for what will be the long slog until Thanksgiving. There’s a ton of to-do items on the agenda, including tax reform, raising the debt ceiling, FY 2018 appropriations, the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), and the list goes on. The focus for the House this week will be extending the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), while the Senate will continue on more judicial nominations. Both Houses will begin to turn efforts into tax reform.

The House is set to unveil their version of a tax reform bill on November 1 and a mark up in committee shortly thereafter. Tentatively, this means, the House could consider the measure on the Floor during the week of the November 6. After passage, the measure would move to the Senate the week of November 13 for mark-ups in the Senate Finance and Energy and Natural Resources Committees and floor consideration during the week of the 20, which is Thanksgiving Recess. Per the agreed expedited process, the tax measure would be considered as a reconciliation bill, so it would only get 20 hours of debate and a vote-a-rama — it could be considered in three days. While this schedule is incredibly ambitious, this framework is the working schedule as of now.

The House— one month after funding for the CHIP has lapsed — is gearing up for a vote on extending funding for the federal program, which insures nine million children in the US. Both parties have been negotiating for weeks. Earlier this month, the House Energy and Commerce Committee approved a measure to fund CHIP for five years with zero Democratic support. Democrats opposed cutting dollars from Obamacare’s public health fund to pay for the measure — so it wasn’t sent to the floor for a vote. However, the GOP is now moving forward as the clock keeps ticking: several states are slated to run out of CHIP money in the next few weeks.

Meanwhile, at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, ehe Administration is set to announce a new Federal Reserve Chair this week and keep up the drum beat on opioids, but the Mueller investigation might make that difficult.

Stay tuned.

Budget and Taxes

Posted on October 20, 2017October 20, 2017

The Senate passed its FY 2018 budget by a vote of 51-49 on last night. The passage is a key step to Republican hopes of creating and passing any tax overhaul measure through Congress along party lines in the coming months. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) was the lone Republican dissenter. Behind the scenes, GOP leaders have already hammered out an agreement to reconcile the differences between the House and Senate budget resolutions, likely negating the need for a formal conference and giving Republicans more time to focus on tax reform before the end of the year.

The Senate adopted a package of House-requested tweaks Thursday night, teeing up the budget resolution for House passage as soon as next week. Both chambers need to pass identical budgets in order to allow Republicans to use the fast-tracking tool for tax reform that permits them to bypass a Democratic filibuster in the Senate. As part of the deal, the House will have to accept the Senate’s plan to add $1.5 trillion to the deficit via tax reform after the lower chamber’s budget initially demanded a deficit-neutral tax plan.

If the Senate resolution can be passed in the House – potentially as soon as next week – it would eliminate the need for a conference agreement or other negotiations to resolve differences between the chambers, and the need for reconsideration of the resolution in the Senate. That would accelerate the process for tax reform given that House leaders have said a tax bill will not be released and processed until the budget is completed. President Trump has urged House members to accept the Senate budget resolution to avoid a conference, and the President will head to the Hill next week to talk to the Senate on a path forward with tax reform.

Marino Out as Drug Czar

Posted on October 17, 2017October 17, 2017

A Washington Post/“60 Minutes” investigation, which aired this weekend, examined Rep. Tom Marino (R-PA) efforts to guide legislation that weakened the Drug Enforcement Administration’s ability to go after drug distributors, even as opioid-related deaths continue to rise.

Marino was the Administration’s nominee for the position of Drug Czar. He has withdrawn his name from consideration.

President Trump has also promised a major announcement about opioids next week.

Administration to Cut Health Insurance Subsidies

Posted on October 13, 2017

Late Thursday, President Trump announced the Administration will no longer pay subsidies to health insurance companies that help pay out-of-pocket costs of low-income people. These plans were disclosed hours after the President issued an executive action yesterday to change the nation’s insurance system, including sales of cheaper policies with fewer benefits and fewer protections for consumers.

The Department of Health and Human Services said it will immediately end these monthly payments, a move that could push premiums as much as 15 to 20 percent higher and prompt more insurers to withdraw from the marketplaces altogether. It would cut approximately $7 billion in annual payments, which reimburse insurers for discounting deductibles and co-payments for the lowest-income enrollees, is grounds for insurers to back out of their federal contracts to even sell plans next year. Already, the Administration had been making the payments on a month-to-month basis, prompting complaints by insurers about a lack of certainty as they tried to plan ahead for 2018 and beyond.

The marketplaces are set to open for 2018 enrollment in two-and-a-half weeks and insurers are finalizing their offerings for 2018 now.

The Administration’s ability to actually make these payments, known as cost-sharing reductions (CSRs) was has already been in question due to a lawsuit filed by House Republicans filed back in 2014 against the Obama Administration.

In the suit, Republicans charged the Administration does not have the authority to make the CSR payments because Congress needed to appropriate the funding, and late last year, a federal judge sided with House Republicans. The ruling stated that the CSRs funding needs to be disbursed by Congress. Technically, this means that the Trump administration would have had to challenge that ruling in order to keep making the payments indefinitely.

Which is what Senators Lamar Alexander (R-TN.) and Patty Murray (D-WA) had been in talks to do for two months. They have been trying to work out a deal to appropriating the funding for 2018 and possibly 2019 to ensure stabilization in the marketplaces, but negotiations have been hampered over disagreements about how much state flexibility to inject into such a bargain. Conservative Republicans have been unwilling to pay CSRs without rolling back ACA regulations, and Democrats will not rollback any of the law’s consumer protections.

Nominee for DHS Secretary Named

Posted on October 13, 2017

At a White House ceremony yesterday, Kirstjen Nielsen was introduced by President Trump as his nominee to lead the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The previous secretary, John Kelly, is now the White House Chief of Staff. Elaine Duke is currently serving as the Acting Secretary of DHS.

Nielsen is currently the principal deputy chief of staff under Kelly and worked for him as well when he ran DHS.

Read more about the nomination here and here.