This Week in Congress

House and Senate

The House and Senate were not in session this week.  The Senate will reconvene on January 23 and the House will return on January 24, 2023.

State of the Union

President Biden has accepted House Speaker McCarthy’s invitation to deliver the State of the Union address on February 7, 2023.

FY’24 President’s Budget

It is expected that the President’s FY’24 budget will not be released on the first Monday in February but will more than likely be sent to Congress sometime in early March. The delay in the release is because of the late enactment of the FY’23 appropriation’s bills. The March date would allow more time to incorporate the FY’23 amounts into the FY’24 budget.

Debt limit

This week Treasury Secretary Yellin stated that the US has reached the statutory limit on the debt and that the Treasury Department is beginning the use of special measures to avoid a US default. The department is altering investments in two government programs for retirees in order to leave room to avoid a default and make room under the ceiling until sometime in early June. The programs include the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund and the Postal Service Retiree Health Benefits Fund. The two funds invest in special-issue Treasury securities that count under the debt limit. After the ceiling is raised, the three will be “made whole.”  No participants will be affected by this action. House Republicans are calling on the Biden Administration to negotiate a deal that would include an agreement to cut Federal programs in exchange for raising the debt ceiling. To date, President Biden has refused to negotiate.

Other Legislative Happenings from Around the Nation

Nirav Shah Named CDC’s Principal Deputy Director

Nirav Shah, Director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention and former president of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, will take over as principal deputy director at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

HIV Vaccine Trial Fails

A late-stage clinical trial was halted because the vaccine, developed by J&J’s vaccine division Janssen, was no better than placebo at preventing HIV infection.  In 2021, a Phase 2b trial of a similar candidate HIV vaccine was stopped when its data and safety monitoring board determined that it was not preventing infections. “These results are disappointing,” Susan Buchbinder, co-chair of the Mosaico trial, said in a statement. “Although HIV continues to prove uniquely challenging for development of a vaccine, the HIV research community remains fully committed to doing just that, and each study brings us a step closer to this realization.

Substance Use Among Persons with Syphilis During Pregnancy

Substance use prevalence has increased among women with syphilis; however, its association with congenital syphilis is less clear. During 2018–2021, the prevalence of substance use among persons with syphilis during pregnancy in Arizona and Georgia was nearly twice as high among those with a congenital syphilis pregnancy outcome (48.1%) as among those without this outcome (24.6%). Approximately one half of persons who used substances during pregnancy and had a congenital syphilis pregnancy outcome had late or no prenatal care. The article can be found here.

Mpox

In its latest situation report on mpox, the World Health Organization (WHO) said cases since its last update on Jan 5 have risen 1%, and, of 11 countries reporting increases, the largest was in Mexico. Meanwhile, other health groups also posted mpox updates. The CDC reported 46 more cases over the past week, along with 2 more deaths, raising the nation’s total to 30,026 cases, 23 of them fatal. Demetre Daskalakis, MD, deputy coordinator of the CDC’s mpox response, said that the nation is averaging about two cases a day, with a goal of driving daily cases down to zero. He added that the vaccine mission isn’t done, with first and second vaccine doses needed for those who haven’t gotten them and can benefit from them. Elsewhere, the European CDC said over the past 4 weeks 166 more mpox cases have been reported from 14 European countries. More than half were reported by Spain, followed by Italy and Sweden.

Gonorrhea

Massachusetts health officials have detected a strain of gonorrhea never before seen in the US.  The strain shows signs of resistance to every recommended treatment for the disease. Health authorities said they identified two cases of a new strain of gonorrhea that appears to have developed resistance to a broad swath of antibiotic treatments.

Abortion

Supreme Court Roe v. Wade Investigation

The Supreme Court announced that an internal investigation had failed to identify who leaked a draft of its opinion overturning Roe v. Wade. Several employees of the court admitted to investigators that they had told their spouses or partners about the draft opinion and vote count in violation of the court’s confidentiality rules, according to a 20-page report on the inquiry. The investigation did not determine whether any of those discussions led to a copy of the draft opinion becoming public. Investigators also found no forensic evidence of who may have leaked the opinion in examining the court’s “computer devices, networks, printers and available call and text logs,” the report said.

50th Anniversary of Roe Ruling

Vice President Harris will deliver remarks in Florida on January 22 to mark the 50th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling.

Mifepristone

This week the FDA argued public harm if the court reverses abortion pill approval. A lawsuit challenging the decades-old FDA approval of mifepristone has no merit, and a Texas judge should reject a request for a court order revoking that approval, the Biden administration argued this week. The FDA said granting the request from anti-abortion groups would be “unprecedented.”

Indiana

The fate of Indiana’s Republican-backed abortion ban goes before the state Supreme Court this week. Arguments will be heard on whether it violates privacy protections under the state constitution. Abortions have been allowed to continue in the state since a county judge blocked the law from being enforced in September, a week after the law approved in August had taken effect. Indiana became the first state to enact tighter abortion restrictions after the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated federal protections by overturning Roe v. Wade in June.