Congress Moves to Extend Government Funding into March

With Congress far behind on the appropriations process prior to this Friday’s deadline, Congressional leadership formally introduced another continuing resolution (CR) over the weekend that would extend both government funding deadlines into March. The stopgap funding bill would set a deadline of March 1 for Agriculture-FDA, Military Construction-VA, Transportation-HUD, and Energy-Water, with everything else — including Labor-HHS-Education — funded through March 8. Lawmakers will now race to pass this stopgap prior to the end of the week, and bipartisan cooperation will be vital toward avoiding a partial shutdown in a short period of time.

• Next Steps. The Senate is set to act first on the CR this week, and leadership will be seeking a “time agreement” to expedite the process so that Congress does not brush up too closely to the deadline. While the stopgap is likely to pass with strong bipartisan support, some politically-tricky amendment votes could be needed to ensure cooperation among all 100 senators to speed things along. Upon passage in the Senate, it is anticipated that House leadership will bring up the CR under suspension of the rules later this week.

• Health Update. In addition to extending government funding, the CR contains extensions for various expiring health care priorities. These extensions include: (1) community health centers, teaching health centers, and the National Health Service Corps; (2) special diabetes programs; (3) a delay of certain disproportionate share payment cuts; (4) Medicare’s work geographic index floor; and (5) the Sexual Risk Avoidance Education program. The stopgap does not address a range of other health care priorities that need to be addressed early this year, including various opioid and pandemic preparedness programs that are due for extensions. To that end, look for health care leaders in Congress to continue their efforts to craft a sweeping health care package that could carry these aforementioned policies, as well as other bipartisan efforts around Medicare physician pay, price transparency, and more.