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This week in Congress: Hurricanes, Jan. 6, Ukraine, and maybe a government shutdown [1]
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Date: 2022-09-26
There’s a lot more to negotiate in what’s going to be tacked on to that base funding bill. President Joe Biden initially requested $47.1 billion in supplemental funding for Ukraine ($11.7 billion), COVID-19 and monkeypox response ($6 billion), natural disaster relief ($6.5 billion), and funding to shore up U.S. energy supplies ($2 billion). Those numbers have fluctuated, though, with the Ukraine offensive and a few brutal hurricanes. The White House has bumped its Ukraine request to $13.7 billion.
Disaster relief might have to be increased as the damage to Puerto Rico from Hurricane Fiona is assessed. Tropical Storm Ian is now Hurricane Ian and is forecasted to strike Florida by midday Thursday. Right now it’s intensifying, and the state is under an emergency declaration. It could definitely demand a bigger emergency funding need.
That would likely come at the expense of COVID-19 and monkeypox. Republicans have been opposing it from the get-go. “We just don’t think that’s necessary,” number two Senate Republican John Thune said earlier this month. “There’s still plenty of money still swirling around from previous Covid bills.”
The U.S. is still averaging about 400 COVID-19 deaths per day. There are about 30,000 people hospitalized with it, and several million are suffering from long COVID, with lasting health effects.
While that funding might be out, there could be some added to help in the Jackson, Mississippi, water crisis; Afghan refugee resettlement; and to build up the heating assistance program for low-income families and seniors. Because winter is coming.
The big elephant in the room is the blow-hard from West Virginia, Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin. He’s still pushing his bill to help the fossil fuel industry rape the land more quickly and easily by changing the federal government’s permitting process. Democrats don’t like the bill. Republicans don’t like it. As of now, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer seems intent on helping Manchin get it in the bill. How that’s going to play out in the next four days is one of the two dramas of Congress this week.
The other is the Jan. 6 committee hearing scheduled for Wednesday, which is potentially the committee’s last public, televised hearing.
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