This Week on the Hill: With Five Days Left Before Recess, Congress to Tackle FAA, Zika, Interior-Environment, Opioids, and Iran Sanctions

With just five days separating Congress from a seven-week recess, lawmakers will be working through a packed agenda, including measures addressing environmental regulations, Iran sanctions, aviation security, abortion, and the Zika virus. The most pressing item for both chambers will be clearing legislation to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) operational authority, which is currently set to expire on Friday. A compromise short-term authorization – which would extend the FAA’s authority through the end of fiscal 2017 – includes increased funding for airport safety operations and is due to reach the House floor today.

House leaders have an additional 23 bills teed up to be considered under suspension of the rules today, most of which focus on Treasury Department efforts to battle terrorist financing and federal higher education programs. Another measure (H.R. 4768) on today’s House schedule would modify the scope of judicial review over agency actions, serving as an effective political message for Republican lawmakers who feel that the Obama Administration has overstepped its bounds in the creation of new regulations. A full list of the measures to be considered today can be found here.

Over the remainder of the week, the lower chamber will focus on the Interior-Environment spending bill, a trio of measures that would place new restrictions on American relations with Iran, and a bill designed to protect hospitals and health plans that don’t cover or provide abortion services. The contentious Interior-Environment spending bill (H.R. 5538) includes riders that would block the White House’s Clean Power Plan and other air quality regulations promulgated by the Environmental Protection Agency. The three Iran-related bills would prevent the U.S. from buying heavy water from Iran (H.R. 5119), bar the White House from allowing Iran to access financial transactions involving the U.S. dollar (H.R. 4992), and hold Iran responsible for state sponsored terror and human rights violations (H.R. 5631). Finally, the House may tee up a measure (S. 304) that would supersede state law in California requiring managed care plans to provide abortion services by broadening the religious-conscience exemption included in the Affordable Care Act.  

Lawmakers in both chambers will also be hoping to break a long-standing impasse over funding for programs to battle the mosquito-borne Zika virus, with Democrats and the White House opposing funding levels and their offsets in a Republican-authored conference report. President Obama has urged Congress to act on the issue before leaving Washington and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has suggested that the Senate will reconsider a cloture vote to move the Military Construction-VA bill (H.R. 2577) that contains the $1.1 billion Zika package.

Leader McConnell is also planning another attempt for the upper chamber to advance the fiscal 2017 defense spending bill (H.R. 5293), which Democrats blocked last week over concerns that they would be left out of conference negotiations as they were with the MilCon-VA bill. A cloture vote on the bill – which, unlike the House version, abides by the spending limits decided under last year’s budget deal – is expected tomorrow. Finally, the Senate may vote on a House-passed conference report to long-negotiated opioids legislation (S. 524), with Democrats debating on whether to join their House colleagues in supporting the measure.

‘Today on the Hill’ includes updates provided by the House and Senate majority leaders, as well information derived from publications including Bloomberg Government, The Hill, Morning Consult, Kaiser Health News, Modern Healthcare, Inside Health Policy, and others.