Today on the Hill: Criminal Justice Headlines Suspension Bills in House; Trump Names Price as HHS Secretary

Legislative action returns to Capitol Hill today as the House and Senate reconvene for the final stretch of the 114^th Congress. While spending legislation and a medical innovation package await on the horizon, the House will vote today on a criminal justice bill (S. 2577) that would reauthorize grants for DNA evidence analysis and reduce the backlog of untested rape kits. The bill falls short of the broader criminal justice reform that many activists had hoped would be passed in Congress this year, but it does reauthorize $290 million for programs to improve police forensic labs and to provide defendants in death-penalty cases with better legal representation. Changes to mandatory sentencing are not included in the measure, and those reforms are now in doubt given the tough-on-crime stance taken by President-elect Donald Trump and his choice for Attorney General, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL).

The criminal justice bill is just one of sixteen measures the House plans to consider today under suspension of the rules as lawmakers work to clear the decks before the end of the year. Today’s set of legislation includes a bill to allow participants in the Department of Defense’s TRICARE health program to instead contribute to a health savings account (H.R. 5458), a measure that would require the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to complete a one-year pilot program to treat veterans with magnetic guided resonance therapy (H.R. 5600), and a bill that would enhance cybersecurity cooperation with Israel (H.R. 5877). A full list of the bills scheduled to be considered today can be found here.

The Senate, meanwhile, is set to vote on the Expanding Capacity for Health Outcomes (ECHO) Act (S. 2873), a measure that would require the Department of Health and Human Services to study the use of distance-education technologies to provide health care, particularly in rural and underserved areas. A vote on passage of the bill is expected before the chamber breaks for its weekly caucus meetings this afternoon.

The Trump transition team is also set to make headlines today, beginning with this morning’s announcement that Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) has been tapped by Trump to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. A full breakdown on that selection and what it means for the repeal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is outlined in the attached TRP note. Additionally, the President-elect is scheduled to meet with Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) and former presidential candidate and Utah governor, Mitt Romney, in the continued deliberation over who will head the State Department in the new Administration.