The Senate reconvened at 10:00 A.M. and is expected to confirm Sarah Elisabeth Geraghty to be United States District Judge for the Northern District of Georgia and Georgette Castner to be United States District Judge for the District of New Jersey. The Senate is also expected to vote on the Motion to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to H.R.4373, FY2022 appropriations for the Department of State, foreign operations, and related programs which is the legislative vehicle for additional COVID funding. A group of senators negotiating a potential deal for the Covid relief is preparing to scale back the overall size of the package amid a disagreement over how to pay for it. The bipartisan group has been negotiating for days over how to revive the $15.6 billion in coronavirus aid that got stripped out of a government funding bill earlier this month, with senators indicating earlier Wednesday that they agreed to roughly $10 billion and that the group was going to drop roughly $5 billion in global coronavirus funding out of a potential agreement. The $5 billion allotment for global vaccine efforts is likely to be dropped because of disputes over how to pay for it with Senator Roy Blunt (R-Missouri) saying that Congress would likely process another Covid bill within two months and return to that issue. Congressional leaders initially struck a deal to include $15.6 billion in coronavirus relief funding into the sweeping government funding bill that passed earlier this month and that funding would have been fully paid for in part by redirecting funds previously allocated for state and local governments. That decision sparked fierce pushback from some House Democrats, and leadership pulled the coronavirus aid out of the government funding bill. This first in a series of procedural votes later today is aimed at setting up a final vote on the Covid bill early next week. The House aims to send the bill to President Joe Biden to become law before Congress departs on a two-week recess at the end of next week on April 8th. The Biden administration has cautioned that existing funds have virtually all been spent or allocated — and that supplies have started to run out.
The House reconvened at 10:00 A.M. and is working on H.R. 6833 – Affordable Insulin Now Act which would cap the cost of insulin at $35, a massive change for patients with diabetes who often pay many hundreds of dollars for the drug. The Build Back Better package, passed by the House in November, contained several provisions that would lower prescription drug costs, including the measure capping the cost of insulin at $35 per month. President Biden at the time pledged the provision would aid “those Americans that are paying too much for insulin.” But that package is in limbo and Democrats are attempting to pass some of the Build Back Better drug reform provisions separately.
