Congress Kicks Off a Chaotic Few Weeks

Funding the government will be the top priority, alongside a full slate of major legislation.

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Good afternoon. We hope you had a peaceful weekend. August recess is coming to a close, and Capitol Hill is about to get a lot more hectic. (For one thing, I’ll face more competition to get the best vending machine snacks before they run out.)

Senators return to Washington, D.C., this afternoon with about nine weeks to go until Election Day, and the House returns next week. Both chambers have a busy calendar. Leaders hope to advance several major bills before members leave town again to focus on the campaign trail.

Government Funding

Lawmakers face an end-of-the-month deadline to fund the government. Members haven’t agreed on a spending package for the upcoming fiscal year, so they’re likely to pass a short-term stopgap. It could go beyond keeping the government running at current levels: President Joe Biden is requesting Congress approve $22.4 billion in funding for coronavirus response and prevention, including replenishing stocks of testing supplies and investing in vaccine research. The administration is also asking for $4.5 billion to respond to the spread of monkeypox, $11.7 billion in military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine, and $6.5 billion for domestic disaster assistance, among other emergencies.

Lawmakers likely won’t pass all of the emergency funding the administration seeks. Republican lawmakers for months have resisted White House requests for additional coronavirus response spending, so that component of the request could face fierce pushback from GOP lawmakers.

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  1. Avatar photo
    Angie

    Thanks Harvest....it is cool to know ahead of time what Congress is working on. And the details you add.

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    Dave Conant - MO

    I'd like to see a bill suspending legislative salaries and expense accounts absent an approved budget (not a continuing resolution) every year. Perhaps that would concentrate their attention and answer Eric's concern at least briefly.

    The Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act and its companion Enhanced Election Security and Protection Act should already have been passed and, if there are 60 Senators who have an ounce of self-respect and respect for the rule of law in this country, they won't get lost in either the funding or the election begging process.

    It is unconscionable that, having destroyed much of their country and thoroughly disarranged their lives, we wouldn't support the Afghans who worked with us in good faith. That bill should be a no-brainer, but too many of our current crop of legislators appear to have less than no brains to offer in respect of anything other than begging for donations and gathering clicks.

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    1. Avatar photo
      Synchronize Your Dogmas (Bill B)

      The way you started that last paragraph I thought you were talking about the US and the electorate.

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        Dave Conant - MO

        It's a thought.

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    Paul Britton

    As usual, a most invaluable report.

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    Bonzai30

    It’s enormously frustrating that only 20% of Republican Senators would support legislation to make it more difficult for politicians to overturn the will of voters when choosing the President. Those Senators who vote against the legislation are a disgrace and do not belong in office.

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    Rev Snow

    "The administration is also asking for $4.5 billion to respond to the spread of monkeypox, $11.7 billion in military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine..."

    Those figures are not as far apart as I would expect them to be. What in the world makes monkeypox response so expensive?

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    1. James Ackerman

      Novel public health threat we aren't currently remotely postured for to deal with. The closest analogue in public health experience is smallpox, which was eliminated in the wild in 1980, so the infrastructure required to deal with it is distinctly lacking these days. Add on the (generally) overinflated costs associated with health care in the U.S. and $4.5b becomes the requisite number quickly (and could very well prove to be an undershot)

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        Rev Snow

        Sounds like horseshit to me. How novel can this infection be when we have a vaccine for it?

        Anyhow, if the funding is really for general purpose infrastructure to give us a "posture" to deal with infectious disease outbreaks, that's not an emergency. Put it in the regular appropriation.

        If the infrastructure will not be general purpose enough to have lasting value, then we're back to the original question. Why is this worth $260K per patient?

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          Stephanie

          Drop your assumption that costs are based on already-diagnosed cases as logic is lacking.

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            Rev Snow

            Adjust my assumptions however you like. Give me any argument whatsoever that monkey pox as it exists in the USA or can reasonably be expected to exist in the foreseeable future is a matter worth spending $4.5 billion of public resources on.

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          Rajeev

          I doubt that taking the cases and dividing by the total allocation is really meaningful. I don't know much about this specific vaccine other than like others the government stockpiles it, allocates it and distributes it to states and then spends money now ordering it upfront as it is in production. This is about the only time that having a federal vaccine program would be useful. States will request it like with Covid and then the government gives it to the states and then it gets distributed. However, with Covid vaccines there was demand everywhere and they were used up. These I imagine will sit in states that want to be prepared and much will be wasted.

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      Rev Snow

      A recent article about monkey pox reports "The U.S. has reported the highest number of cases, with more than 17,400..."

      https://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/news/20220829/us-monkeypox-outbreak-may-be-slowing

      Why does monkeypox response cost an average of $260,000 per patient?

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        Stephanie

        I doubt the expenses required to set up a public health response to monkeypox is calculated based on the number of cases to date. Most likely they consider the manpower, supplies, costs of vaccine distribution, and other infrastructure, then multiply that for thousands of public health departments.

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          Rev Snow

          There has to be some non-insane relationship between the amount of public money spent on a problem and the importance of the problem. One of the factors determining importance is size. Any proposal to spend billions of dollars to deal with a problem confronting only tens of thousands of people needs additional justification.

          Is monkey pox deadly? Crippling? Disfiguring? What bad outcomes is this emergency funding expected to prevent or mitigate? Is it likely to succeed? If it succeeds, what will we have purchased with our public spending? If we choose not to spend this money, or spend a lesser amount, what increased suffering are we choosing and for whom?

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        Dave Conant - MO

        Really good questions.

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          Toni in Texas

          Excellent question.The administration has NO CLUE.They are most likely throwing it on the wall to see if it sticks

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            Stephanie

            There are numbers crunchers galore to make those calculations.

            Most likely it’s random people on social media who have no clue and just throw stuff on the wall because the administration is not part of their tribe.

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    EricRemcon@gmail

    Thanks for the warning, Haley, about the upcoming government funding fight. I will stock up on Pepto-Bismol™ to prepare for your future coverage of the looming government shutdown and the squabbling about the priorities for all of the red ink spending that will be spilled by the end of the year.

    “short-term stopgap” measures are the de-facto regular order nowadays. We really shouldn’t call it a federal budget anymore. In my mind, a budget is an attempt to align spending with revenue. That is a practice that does not exist at the federal level. The bills are either “emergency” or the spending of 10 years of revenue in two or three years to hide the fact that whatever the priority is, it isn’t paid for. That 7-year gap then becomes the next “emergency”.

    If only we had politicians that actually cared about the long-term health of the country more than the next election or voters that had longer attention spans than a few (shortened) news cycles.

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