Alex Azar was confirmed by the Senate earlier this afternoon as the next Secretary of Health and Human Services by a vote of 55 – 43.
Category: Health/Medical
Senate to Take Up HHS Nomination
The full Senate is scheduled to take up today the nomination of Alex Azar to serve as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Azar is not a new-comer to the HHS as he served as Deputy Secretary during the George W. Bush Administration. He has recently been an executive at the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly and Co.
HHS funds and oversees a host of health-related and biomedical agencies and research programs. The National Institutes of Health is part of HHS.
Azar was nominated to replace former Secretary Tom Price, who resigned last year.
Monday Noon
The Senate has scheduled a vote on a CR to reopen the government for Monday at noon. The CR will reportedly be the same as the previous CR, funding CHIP and eliminating the Cadillac tax, but it will not address DACA or Dreamers. To clarify, negotiations remain ongoing, and this is not a deal. Rather, it is the same bill passed by the House that failed to gain cloture in the Senate with a different date — February 9 vs. February 16.
Stay tuned.
Shut Down
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) held a procedural vote, known as a cloture vote, to end debate and move on to voting with the the four-week continuing resolution (CR) that the House passed earlier this week. After holding the vote open for over an hour, the measure failed to receive the 60 votes needed end debate.
After cloture was rejected, McConnell announced that he would ask senators to vote on a CR through Feb. 8 in the near term — presumably after the weekend, so terms can be negotiated.
The federal Office of Personnel and Management posted the following status at 1:38 am EST. “Due to a lapse in appropriations, Federal government operations vary by agency. Employees should refer to their home agency for guidance on reporting for duty.”
The federal government is shut down.
All sides think that they are going to win the public opinion in any shutdown fall out.
Stay tuned.
House Passes CR
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.