This Week in Congress

House and Senate

The House and Senate are out of session and will return on April 17 for official business.

House Dear Colleague Letter

At the request of NCSD, a Dear Colleague letter signed by 22 House members was sent to Reps. Robert Aderholt, Chair and Rosa DeLauro Ranking Member of the House LHHS Subcommittee. The letter requests $312.5 million for the CDC to help rebuild State and local health departments to combat STIs, and $200,000,000 for clinical services at HRSA to expand capacity to address shortages in STI clinical services. Read the Dear Colleague Letter.

Social Security

A new report finds that the Social Security system’s retiree fund will only be able to fully pay scheduled benefits until 2033, one year earlier than reported last year. It was also announced that Medicare’s hospital insurance trust fund which helps pay for Part A inpatient hospital care will only be able to pay full benefits until 2031, three years later than last year’s projection. Congress has deliberated various options—like increasing taxes and reducing benefits—to reduce or eliminate both programs’ long-term financing shortfalls. However, there is no indication that lawmakers will take action to address this issue any time soon. Originally, some Republicans called for a debt-ceiling deal to also address entitlement solvency, and possibly set up a bipartisan panel to negotiate policy changes. A bipartisan group of senators have held informal discussions about entitlement solvency but to date haven’t produced an agreement. The findings from the 2023 Annual Report can be found here.

Other Legislative Happenings from Around the Nation

COVID-19

FDA to Okay Second Omicron Booster

Federal regulators have decided to authorize a second omicron-specific coronavirus vaccine booster shot for people who are at least 65 or have weak immune systems — an effort to provide additional protection to high-risk individuals, according to several officials familiar with the plan. The FDA is expected to announce the step in the next few weeks, and it is likely that the CDC will move quickly to endorse it.

Nasal Vaccine

Scientists in Germany say they’ve been able to make a nasal vaccine that can shut down a Covid-19 infection in the nose and throat, where the virus gets its first foothold. In experiments on hamsters, two doses of the vaccine – which is made with a live but weakened form of the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 – blocked the virus from copying itself in the animals’ upper airways, achieving “sterilizing immunity” and preventing illness, a long-sought goal of the pandemic.

Abortion

Florida

Florida’s Republican-led Senate has passed a bill to outlaw most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, bringing the state a step closer to joining others across the U.S. South in banning almost all abortions. Florida currently has a law banning abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, which is being challenged in court. Republicans in the state House of Representatives and Senate filed concurrent bills last month to restrict the procedure further, starting at six weeks of pregnancy.

Idaho

Officials at Valor Health, a county-owned hospital in Emmett, Idaho — said in their announcement that it has been “unsustainably expensive to recruit and retain” nurses. The announcement comes just weeks after Bonner General Health in Sandpoint said it would stop its labor and delivery services. Bonner blamed staff shortages as well as the state’s anti-abortion climate. The decision comes as the Idaho legislature is on track to defund research into preventing maternal deaths; as state lawmakers have banned nearly all abortions; and as Idaho chooses not to extend its postpartum Medicaid coverage.

Kansas

Doctors accused of not providing enough care to infants delivered alive during certain kinds of abortion procedures in Kansas could face lawsuits and criminal charges under a bill that won final approval in the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature. The legislation faces an uncertain fate in a legal and political climate that’s made Kansas an outlier on abortion policy among states with GOP-led legislatures. The bill applies not only to “botched” or “unsuccessful” abortions but also when doctors induce labor to deliver a fetus that is expected to die within minutes or even seconds outside the womb, which often occurs because of a severe medical issue.

Maine

Maine lawmakers are preparing to take up several proposals in the coming weeks to expand abortion access, including one by Democratic Gov. Mills to allow women in Maine to get abortions later in pregnancy if deemed necessary by a medical provider. Current state law bans abortions after a fetus becomes viable outside the womb, at roughly 24 weeks. The governor’s bill would allow later abortions with a doctor’s approval.

Utah

Planned Parenthood has asked a state court judge in Utah to block a law set to take effect next month that would effectively ban abortion clinics from operating in the state. Planned Parenthood said the law, which would eliminate the licensing process for abortion clinics and thus effectively make it impossible to get an abortion anywhere but in a hospital, violated the state constitution’s rights to privacy and bodily integrity, in a lawsuit filed in the Third Judicial District Court in Salt Lake City.

Washington

State officials have stocked up on a key abortion drug in preparation for the possibility that it could become much more difficult to access nationwide, pending the outcome of a federal lawsuit brought by anti-abortion-rights groups. Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, says he ordered the Washington Department of Corrections to use its pharmacy license to buy 30,000 doses of mifepristone, an estimated three-year supply for patients in Washington state. The pills were received on March 31.

Anti-Transgender Legislation

So far in 2023, barely a day has passed without state lawmakers across the country introducing a new anti-LGBTQ bill. Many of those bills are advancing and, in some cases, being enshrined into law. In addition, groups that have made abortion almost impossible in swaths of the country are now trying to ban trans health care.

Indiana

Whether a ban all gender-affirming care for minors will become law in Indiana remains unclear after the state’s Republican Governor Holcomb said that the bill on his desk is “clear as mud.” The bill Republican state lawmakers advanced last week would prohibit transgender youth under 18 from accessing hormone therapies, puberty blockers and surgeries in the state.

Kansas

A Kansas bill to impose some of the nation’s broadest bathroom restrictions and ban transgender people from changing the name or gender on their driver’s licenses cleared the legislature. The bill passed by a vote of voted 28-12 with one vote more than a two-thirds majority needed to overturn any veto.

Oklahoma

Controversial new rules affecting school library books and transgender students should be null and void under a binding opinion from the state attorney general. The Oklahoma State Board of Education approved new rules last month without the Legislature giving the board the authority to do so, the attorney general’s office said. (Martinez-Keel, 4/4)

Texas

The Texas Senate passed a bill to ban certain medical treatments for transgender youth. The legislation now heads to the House for further debate.