The House voted 230 – 197 to approve a continuing resolution (CR) that would fund the government through February 16 and renew the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) for six years. It does not include any immigration provisions to address DACA, Dreamers, or the border.
The measure goes on to the Senate.
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:
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.
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.
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.
Read more here.
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.
The first HHS Secretary in the Trump Administration, Tom Price, resigned earlier this fall due to the fallout over his use of chartered flights.