This Week in Congress

The U.S. House has adjourned for the August recess. The House will resume committee work on August 31 but is not scheduled to resume voting until September 20. However, the House will likely come back before that if the Senate passes the “infrastructure” and budget bills before September 20. The House was unable to complete work on the Commerce, Justice, and Science bill before adjourning because of concerns from police unions. They objected to language in the bill that unions said would jeopardize public safety by withholding grant funds unless an accreditation process is certified in an impossibly short period of time. This gives Campaign for Liberty supporters more time to call their U.S. Representatives and tell them to support the Massie-Lofgren-Davidson-Jayapal amendment defunding Section 702 of the FISA ACT, which some call the “crown jewel of the surveillance state.” You can find your representative and his or her contact information here. The Senate is in session and working on the bipartisan infrastructure bill. The bill text was finally introduced late Sunday. The bill number is H.R. 3684. Even though the  2,700-page bill was not introduced until last night, the Senate has been casting procedural votes (one on cloture and one on the motion to proceed) since last Wednesday and stayed in session all weekend to work on the bill. The rush to pass the bill means few (if any) Senators who will vote for it will actually have the time to read and comprehend the provisions in the bill before voting on it. You can see the roll-call vote on cloture here. You can see the roll-call vote on the motion to proceed here. One of the most outrageous things about the bill is it “pays for” the spending, in part, by repealing a rule proposed by the Trump administration regarding Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs). PBMs negotiate lower prices and rebates with pharmaceutical companies on behalf of health care plans, including Medicare Part D. Trump’s rule would give any rebates obtained for Medicare Part D plans directly to Medicare beneficiaries, rather than using the rebates to lower premiums. This rule would thus raise premiums, which would raise the cost to the government of Medicare premiums. So, repealing the rule would save the government $40 billion—if the rule was actually implemented. But the rule, which was proposed by President Trump in his last months in office, was never implemented and President Biden has announced his intention to withdraw the rule, so the savings from repealing the rule are illusionary. You can read more about this phony cut which is being used to offset real spending here.