Congress to focus on labor-HHS, other unfinished appropriations Bills during Lame-Duck session

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Nov 13 2006

Congress likely will focus on the fiscal year 2007 Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill and other unfinished spending bills during a lame-duck session that began on Monday, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The federal government has operated on a continuing resolution since FY 2007 began on Oct. 1, and the House this week will vote to extend the resolution until Dec. 8 (Lueck/Rogers, Wall Street Journal, 11/13). The Senate will begin with the unfinished appropriations bills most likely to pass, such as the Military Construction-VA appropriations bill. According to CQ HealthBeat, lawmakers in December could seek to pass an omnibus appropriations bill that includes most of the unfinished spending bills, but the "thorniest appropriations measures, such as the Labor-HHS-Education bill, could be extended until next year" as part of a continuing resolution. "House GOP leaders had promised moderates before the election to find an additional $3 billion for the" Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill "but had not identified the source of the funding," CQ Today reports (Dennis, CQ Today, 11/10). "There is a $5.5 billion gap" between the Senate and House on the unfinished appropriations bills, "but resolving the issue is a shared goal for the administration and Democrats," the Journal reports (Wall Street Journal, 11/13).

Bioterrorism, Pandemic Flu Preparedness
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) last week said that bioterrorism and pandemic flu preparedness are among his priorities for the lame-duck session. Democrats seek to pass a bill (S 3678), sponsored by Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), that would reauthorize a law related to bioterrorism and disease outbreak preparedness through 2011. The legislation would:

Make HHS the lead agency in public health and medical response to bioterrorist attacks and disease outbreaks;
Make the National Disaster Medical System, currently part of the Department of Homeland Security, part of HHS;
Require the HHS secretary to prepare and implement a national preparedness and response strategy and to begin to submit the strategy to Congress in 2009, followed by revisions every four years; and
Award $1 billion in federal grants annually to states to establish public health and medical preparedness strategies.

Democrats plan to attach the legislation to a separate bill (S 1873), a version of which the House passed by voice vote on Sept. 26, that would establish the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority. BARDA would coordinate federal efforts to produce countermeasures against biological weapons and illnesses such as pandemic flu. "It remains unclear whether S 3678 can pass both chambers and potentially go through a conference committee before Congress recesses," CQ HealthBeat reports (Berger, CQ HealthBeat, 11/10).

Other Issues
Meanwhile, legislation to increase Medicare physician reimbursements and to promote the use of health care information technology "might get left behind or pushed into the 110th Congress," CongressDaily reports (Vaughan, CongressDaily, 11/13). Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution said, "Democrats won't allow anything to pass they don't like, and Republicans have little interest in starting the Democratic reign early. It could be a very short lame-duck session" (Simon/Havemann, Los Angeles Times, 11/13).

Editorial
"When it reconvenes this week, the 109th Congress should concentrate on ... passing the 11 remaining spending bills for the 2007 fiscal year," a Washington Post editorial states. "The temptation for Republicans will be simply to approve a continuing resolution keeping this year's spending at 2006 levels, leaving the new majority to make the tough choices when it takes over in January," the editorial states. However, such a move "would be an abdication of responsibility, forcing government agencies to limp along without knowing their final budgets," according to the editorial (Washington Post, 11/13).

This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.