This Week on the Hill: House Tackles Opioids as Senate Continues Approps Work

Both chambers return from their brief recesses this week, with the Senate set to continue its work on the Energy-Water Development spending measure, and the House aiming to tackle a legislative package aimed at combating the emerging opioid-addiction epidemic. 

Senate lawmakers return from recess today to pick up where they left off on the first appropriations bill to reach the floor of either chamber. The Energy-Water Development spending measure (H.R. 2028) – which would provide $37.5 billion for the Energy Department, Army Corps of Engineers, parts of the Interior Department, and other agencies – was caught up in a partisan impasse before the break over an amendment submitted by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) to bar government funds from being used to purchase heavy water from Iran. Democrats have called the amendment a “poison pill” and the White House has warned that President Obama would veto legislation containing the amendment should it reach his desk. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), however, has teed up a cloture vote this afternoon to advance the measure to a passage vote.
 
In the House, lawmakers will begin consideration of a legislative package intended to curb opioid abuse, forming the lower chamber’s response to the Senate-passed Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (S. 524). The House is scheduled to debate more than a dozen bills over the course of the week and then may package provisions together as a substitute to the Senate measure, setting up a bicameral conference on the legislation. The House bills on the floor this week – which were largely passed out of the House Judiciary and House Energy and Commerce Committees by voice vote last month – include some changes from the Senate version, such as a provision (H.R. 5052) to reduce the number of grant programs targeted for opioid abuse treatment and prevention.
 
Off the floor this week, the House Natural Resources Committee is expected to release a revised bill aimed at addressing the Puerto Rican debt crisis, after the last version failed to be reported out of the committee. While both the old and new versions would set up a financial control board to restructure the island territory’s debt, Natural Resources Committee Chairman Rob Bishop (R-UT) said there are still disagreements over “small pieces” of the legislation. Meanwhile, Senate appropriators will continue to seek an agreement on a $1.1 billion bipartisan compromise to provide emergency funding to fight the Zika virus ahead of the U.S. mosquito season. Progress had stalled before the recess because of concern among Republicans that such a deal would be opposed by lawmakers in the House, who are looking to find offsets for the spending.
 
‘This Week 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.