Yesterday, the White House announced the President’s intent to nominate Barry Myers as Under Secretary for Oceans and Atmosphere at the Department of Commerce. Myers has served at the CEO of AccuWeather since 2007.
Category: Administration
Executive Order on Health Care Issued
Today, President Donald Trump issued a presidential directive to broaden the development of business association health plans, ease restrictions on short-term medical insurance and expand employer health care reimbursement accounts. The memorandum starts the rulemaking process, which will forge the details of the plans’ requirements. The White House is attempting to expand access to health insurance policies that face fewer regulations after several defeats of ACA repeal this year.
The new regulatory push on adjusting health insurance offerings was signaled by the White House earlier this year but deferred by ongoing and eventually stalled legislative action on repealing and replacing the 2010 health care law.
The order does two important things.
First, it asks cabinet officials to look for ways to expand short-term, limited-duration insurance. These plans generally come with less coverage than health plans sold through the ACA’s individual market, but they have grown in popularity since the ACA’s passage — even though people who buy them face federal penalties because their coverage does not meet the ACA’s standards.
The Presidential memo urges regulators to reverse an Obama administration policy that capped the duration of short-term policies at three months. If that’s enacted, those policies could return to lasting up to almost a year in many states.
Secondly, the order directs agencies to ease rules that allow small businesses, and possibly individuals, to band together in arrangements called “association health plans.” Such arrangements do exist today in some capacity, but expanding them could cause legal headaches for the Administration.
DACA Deal Proposed
President Trump released a list of measures to restrict immigration that the Administration wants in exchange for passing the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program into law. The White House called for the border wall; tougher penalties for asylum fraud; faster deportation of unaccompanied minors; a grant cutoff to sanctuary cities; restriction of permanent-residency sponsorship by U.S. citizens to spouses and minor children; and a merit-based points system for green cards.
The documents do not specify whether all of the President’s policy demands need to be included in a legislative deal to codify DACA.
Politico has posted both the executive summary and the seven-page principles and policies document.
New Deputy Secretary at HHS
Eric Hargan was officially confirmed by the Senate on a 57-38 vote yesterday afternoon.
Hargan’s confirmation comes at a crucial time for HHS, which has relied on career staffer Don Wright to lead the agency since Tom Price resigned as secretary on Friday. Secretary Price’s recent exit helped accelerate the consideration of HHS nominees. Hargan will likely serve as acting secretary until Price’s replacement is confirmed. No word on who will take that position.
Hargan has served in several roles at HHS before between 2003 and 2007, including Acting Deputy Secretary, before leaving government work to serve as a lawyer in Chicago. Hargan also served on the Trump transition team for HHS.
Budget? Budget?
The Senate Budget Committee will take its first steps on a framework for federal spending and tax cuts in FY 2018 this week.
The Senate Budget Committee released its FY 2018 draft resolution on Friday that would establish the path for consideration of revenue, spending, and other fiscal legislation.
Senate Committee will debate overall limits on discretionary spending for the coming fiscal year and 10-year projections, as well as mark up the resolution on Wednesday and Thursday. If adopted, it could become an enforcement tool — through points of order — during the annual appropriations process. House and Senate majority were attempting to use the FY 2018 budget as a means to further repeal the ACA — the House included language to instruct committees to do so — but all language instructing the Senate Committees to do similar has been stripped. Rather, the Senate focuses on tax reform, signaling a pivot in the Majority’s priorities.
The focal point of the legislation is the draft language instructing the Senate Finance and the House Ways and Means committees to increase the deficit by $1.5 trillion over the next decade. That number gives the tax-writing panels the opportunity to alter the tax code.
The whole Senate will begin its annual Budget consideration process, known as “vote-a-rama,” the week of October 16th.
Meanwhile, the full House plans to vote Thursday on its own budget resolution, which also would advance what would be the most sweeping tax overhaul in more than three decades. That plan would require Congress to cut at least $203 billion from entitlement programs over 10 years. House leadership has suggested the Senate version is more likely to prevail in a final compromise and the language on entitlements is likely to be stripped on the House floor.
There are other notable differences between the House and Senate budgets. For instance, the House budget includes instructions for a tax plan that does not increase the deficit, but the Senate budget would let tax writers add $1.5 trillion to the deficit over a decade. The Senate provides $549 billion for defense spending and $516 billion for nondefense discretionary programs, which are levels in line the the Budget Control Act caps. The House measure provides $621.5 billion for defense programs and $511 billion for nondefense discretionary programs. Since the House provides levels significantly beyond the BCA caps, enacting such a measure would take an act of legislation (and a signature by the President), which is beyond the scope of a typical Congressional budget, a document that only binds Congress and is not signed by the President.
Eventually, the two chambers would have to agree on a budget for Congressional Republicans to use reconciliation.