Both the House and Senate convened at 10 a.m. this morning. The House will begin work on H.R. 2668 – Consumer Protection and Recovery Act which would restore the FTC’s Section 13(b) authority to hold wrongdoers accountable and compensate consumer-victims harmed by their actions. The House is also expected to take up as many as 24 bills under suspension of the Rules, some of which may be voted on in a single en bloc.
The Senate will work on the nomination Kenneth Allen Polite, Jr. to be an Assistant Attorney General as well as the nomination of Jennifer Ann Abruzzo to be General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board. Of note, on Monday Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) filed a Motion to proceed to Calendar #100, H.R.3684, INVEST in America Act, which is the vehicle for the bipartisan infrastructure framework.
Leader Schumer this morning urged Republicans to support moving forward on the bipartisan infrastructure deal as GOP senators appear poised to block the start of debate. The Senate will vote Wednesday on advancing a shell bill, paving the way for debate on the bipartisan framework. With bipartisan negotiators still working to finalize their agreement, Schumer would swap in the text once it’s finalized if he overcomes Wednesday’s hurdle. A bipartisan group of Senate negotiators and senior White House officials is struggling to finish work on the package and senators have narrowed the number of outstanding disagreements in the talks to roughly a dozen, but the biggest problem of them all, how to pay for $579 billion in new spending, remains unresolved. That number represents spending over current budget baselines. The total deal is estimated at $1.2 trillion over eight years or $973 billion over five years. Republicans warn there’s no chance they’ll get it all wrapped up by Wednesday, when Schumer plans to force a vote on a motion to proceed. Without the support of at least 10 GOP senators, a vote to begin the infrastructure debate Wednesday will fail, putting the bipartisan legislation in limbo and raising serious questions about whether it can ever get across the finish line. The latest impasse this morning is over a Republican proposal to repeal a Trump-era rule on Medicare rebates that was intended to lower patients’ out-of-pocket spending on prescription drugs by allowing pharmacy benefit managers to pass along savings to consumers instead of insurance companies. But critics of the Trump rule say it instead cost patients more money by raising their premiums, a cost passed on to the federal government through higher premium subsidies.
President Joe Biden will hold a Cabinet meeting to mark six months in office with the Vice President this afternoon and is expected to focus the discussion on COVID-19, infrastructure, climate and cybersecurity. Tuesday will be the first time Biden’s full Cabinet convenes in the Cabinet Room at the White House. The President’s first full in-person Cabinet meeting took place earlier this year in the East Room due to social distancing constraints due to the coronavirus pandemic. The President is also likely to tout his administration’s accomplishments during the Cabinet meeting, including the national vaccine distribution effort and the massive $1.9 trillion COVID relief law that has provided checks to Americans across the country through provisions including the expanded child tax credit.
