That all of them had to jockey for space in must-pass bills was symptomatic of the lackadaisical approach to the lame duck, a stark contrast to the last time Democrats had a lame-duck session before losing their congressional majority.Īnd the real culprit in that is Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who appears to have thought that the successes of August, when Congress advanced the Inflation Reduction Act, medical care for veterans exposed to toxic burn pits (the PACT Act), and semiconductor manufacturing subsidies (the CHIPS and Science Act), were enough to secure the Democratic majority’s legacy. While some last-second proposed deals for the omnibus were far-fetched, others were bipartisan enough that they could have found their way to the president’s desk months ago. And there are a handful of more minor tweaks, including extensions of health care measures like pandemic-era telehealth for federal programs.Īs a last grab for policy under a Democratic congressional majority in President Biden’s first term, this is frankly a very modest haul. The Merger Filing Fee Modernization Act, which gives antitrust agencies more resources to protect the public from the consequences of concentration (eventually the new fees don’t start for two years), while preventing venue-shopping to preferred judges by large firms in multistate lawsuits, is in the omnibus, which supporters have called the first strengthening of antitrust law since 1976. So did a bill expanding veteran mental health care, alongside a large increase for veteran health care more generally. The SECURE Act 2.0, which as my colleague Lee Harris has written is generally a series of tax breaks for wealthy retirees, got in there. There’s $45 billion for Ukraine, above President Biden’s $37 billion request. TikTok will be banned from government phones and devices. The Electoral Count Reform Act, for example, which will cut off one potential avenue of stealing a presidential election by confirming that the vice president cannot reject lawful electors, made it into the omnibus. The omnibus spending bill released Tuesday, which funds the government through to next September, includes a handful of items that lawmakers had hoped could be forced into the bill, though not everything lawmakers wanted. The 117th Congress came down to one final legislative package, and because it was the last train leaving the station in Washington, every significant unfinished activity of the two-year Democratic majority was trying to book passage. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) conduct a bill enrollment ceremony after the House passed the Respect for Marriage Act, December 8, 2022, at the U.S.
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