Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) filed cloture Monday evening on a motion to advance S.4132 – Women’s Health Protection Act of 2022, a bill that would codify access to abortion into federal law, just a week after the leak of a draft decision from the Supreme Court that showed the court poised to overturn Roe v. Wade. A final Senate vote on the measure will happen Wednesday. That vote will probably fail, given that Democrats would need at least 60 votes to overcome a Republican filibuster. The legislation introduced by Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut), guarantees a pregnant person’s right to access an abortion—and the right of an abortion provider to deliver such abortion services—free from medically unnecessary restrictions that interfere with a patient’s individual choice or the provider-patient relationship.
For today, the Senate reconvened at 10:00 A.M. and is expected to work on nominations including Ann Claire Phillips to be Administrator of the Maritime Administration, Asmeret Asefaw Berhe to be Director of the Office of Science, Department of Energy and the long stalled nomination of Lisa DeNell Cook to be a Member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.
House and Senate Democrats plan to move ahead with an expanded funding package to aid Ukraine this week by decoupling it from the additional COVID funding. Lawmakers hope to pass the funding quickly to meet ongoing needs as the country battles continued attacks from Russia. Democrats are proposing nearly $40 billion in new assistance, above the roughly $33 billion requested by the Biden administration. The extra funding from Congress would include an additional $3.4 billion for both military and humanitarian assistance in addition to the money requested by the White House. The proposal could be on the House floor as soon as today. Whether it could also pass the Senate by the end of the week depends on if all 100 senators could work out a time agreement and when the House sends over the legislation. The Ukraine aid will not be attached to a $10 billion coronavirus assistance package as that package has been stuck for weeks in the Senate because Republicans are demanding an amendment vote to prevent the administration from lifting a Trump-era border health policy. In a statement later on Monday, President Joe Biden said he would accept moving the two measures separately. Biden said that while he urged Congress to act on funding for COVID-19 treatments, the need for aid to Ukraine was too great to put off any further.
For today, the House will consider 27 bills under suspension of the Rules from the Science, Space, and Technology Committee, the Financial Services Committee and the Oversight and Reform Committee.
Speaker Pelosi Dear Colleague on the Supreme Court Draft Ruling.
Adam S. Olsen, Washington, D.C.
