While the Senate is out today, the House met at 9:00 a.m. for legislative business and will complete consideration of H.R. 1065 – Pregnant Workers Fairness Act.
This afternoon, President Joe Biden will meet with six recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in the Oval Office as his administration signals his immigration reform plan remains a legislative priority. In his address to a joint session of Congress last month, Biden called on lawmakers to “end our exhausting war over immigration.” While pushing his plan to extend citizenship to more than 11 million undocumented immigrants, he also said Congress could act to secure protections for “Dreamers,” beneficiaries of the Obama-era DACA program, which enabled undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children to remain in the country. The individuals Biden will meet Friday underscore the administration’s argument for enshrining that executive action into law, highlighting essential workers in fields like education, agriculture and health care.
President Biden continued meeting with congressional Republicans on Thursday in the hopes of landing a bipartisan deal on an infrastructure package, but major hurdles persist over what items would be in the measure, and how it might be paid for. Following Thursday’s meeting, Biden said the conversation had not yet led to any concrete compromises, but that he had outlined to the Republican leadership his ambitions for the package’s scope and source of funding. Biden said the two camps agreed that Republicans would return with a counter offer and that discussions on the matter would continue next week. “I am very optimistic that we can reach a reasonable agreement, but even if we don’t, it’s been a good faith effort that we started,” Biden told reporters following an unrelated press conference on the CDC’s updated coronavirus guidance.
The Senate will reconvene at 3 p.m. on Monday, and will continue work on S.1260 – Endless Frontier Act.
