Last Thursday the Senate HELP Committee focused on the topic of spreading opioid addiction and what current Administration leaders and departments were doing about it. One of the starkest statistics (from the CDC) is that for every opioid related overdose death, there are another 60 addicts out there. The witnesses were Food and Drug Administration
The Senate is expected to vote on the Graham-Cassidy-Johnson-Heller Medicaid block grant/per capita cap this week, with shifting odds of passage. Over the weekend, more questions than answers were being raised about its prospects, especially after Senator John McCain (R-AZ) said on Friday that he could not vote for the bill yet due to the
Around the same time that the latest repeal of the ACA was gaining traction, Senate leaders lead by Budget Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-TN) indicated that Republican leadership had come to an agreement on a budget resolution for 2018. The budget resolution is significant in that it could clear the way for a fast track
On Wednesday morning and evening, the House Ways and Means Committee debated and passed a re-authorization of the home visiting program. The legislation, the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) program, named the Increasing Opportunity and Success for Children and Parents through Evidence-Based Home Visiting Act (H.R. 2824) passed on a party-line vote. Despite
On Wednesday, September 13, the President and Democratic leaders appeared to line up on a deal that would restore protections for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) children and youth. The initial description indicated the DACA protections would go hand and hand with greater security funding but no wall against Mexico funding. Within hours however
On Thursday, September 14, Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) and Congressman Bobby Scott (D-VA) introduced the Child Care for Working Families Act. The new legistaion attempts to set down a strong marker for what is truly needed to make improvements in the nation’s child care and early childhood education systems across the fifty states. It would
On Wednesday, September 13, the U.S. Census Bureau released new data on poverty and health care coverage for the year 2016. According to data released by the U.S. Census Bureau, 18 percent of children in the U.S. were living in poverty in 2016. While that is a slight improvement over the previous year children continue
On Wednesday, September 6 the Senate HELP Committee began an initial series of four hearings over two weeks. Chairman Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) struck a strong bipartisan note at the beginning of the hearing indicating that he wanted to find a basic quick bipartisan fix for some key issues and have an agreement together
On September 5, the Trump Administration announced the eventual elimination of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival or DACA. The official announcement was delivered by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. It begins another “repeal and replace” debate but this time the President can repeal all on his own. DACA allows an undocumented young person brought into
The President is expected to announce his decision on the fata of "DACA" sometime today. In June, Homeland Security announced what appeared to be an extension of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). Later the Administration said they had not made a final decision on DACA but wanted to clarify their policy in another
