The House met at noon for legislative business and will complete consideration of H.R. 2547 – Comprehensive Debt Collection Improvement Act which would dramatically reform laws regulating debt collectors, and would provide new relief to private student loan borrowers.
The Senate convened at 11:00 a.m. and resumed consideration of the nomination of Amber Faye McReynolds, of Colorado, to be a Governor of the United States Postal Service.
Hearings of note include, at 10:15 a.m. DHS Secretary Mayorkas began testifying before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on DHS’ actions to address unaccompanied minors at the southern border and at 10:30 a.m. USTR Katherine Tai began testifying before the House Ways and Means Committee on the Biden administration’s 2021 trade policy agenda. Yesterday Tai faced contentious questioning by Republican members of the Senate Finance Committee over President Biden’s decision to back vaccine intellectual property waivers for COVID-19 vaccines. Nearly every Republican on the panel opposed the move during a hearing on the administration’s trade agenda. They argued that approving the waiver would give away valuable U.S. innovations to foreign competitors while potentially complicating the production of vaccines by countries suddenly competing for key ingredients.
At 1:30 p.m. President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg will hold a meeting to discuss infrastructure with Senate Republican committee leaders. Senators Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, John Barrasso of Wyoming, Roy Blunt of Missouri, Mike Crapo of Idaho, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and Roger Wicker of Mississippi are scheduled to attend. The session comes ahead of a critical Memorial Day deadline the White House set for progress — which also has yet to be defined — on advancing Biden’s jobs and infrastructure plan. Key committees are trying to push forward transportation bills that achieve some of the president’s initiatives by then, although some of those discussions are snarled in partisan disputes. A key test of whether such a bipartisan achievement is possible will come today when Biden will meet privately with the half-dozen Republican senators who have been crafting the party’s alternative to the White House’s sweeping, $2.3 trillion infrastructure proposal.
Of note on Thursday, the Biden Administration announced it will invest $7.4 billion from the American Rescue Plan to recruit and hire public health workers to respond to the pandemic and prepare for future public health challenges. White House FACT SHEET.
Adam S. Olsen, Washington, D.C.
