Summary
Congress is in recess this week and returns next Monday, July 12, after which a busy three weeks will follow for lawmakers to work on infrastructure, budget reconciliation, and fiscal year (FY) 2022 appropriations. A brief recap on where things stand with these three legislative priorities follows.
Traditional Infrastructure
The House passed Democrats’ INVEST in America Act (H.R. 3684) last week, a $715 billion package that would reauthorize surface transportation programs expiring September 30 and provide funding for other transportation and drinking water infrastructure needs. The bill is likely to serve as a marker for negotiations with the Senate bipartisan group and the White House, who recently arrived at their own bipartisan framework for a traditional infrastructure package.
Budget Reconciliation
In the meantime, congressional Democrats are expected to begin work on the second track of its overall infrastructure push, which will contain President Biden’s “human infrastructure” proposals reflected in the American Jobs Plan and American Families Plan. Such a package would need to move through budget reconciliation and could therefore contain a number of other Democratic priorities, including drug pricing reform; expanding the Medicare benefit to include dental, vision, and hearing; and Medicaid gap coverage.
How exactly Democrats will proceed will depend on the forthcoming FY 2022 budget resolution. House Democrats recently signaled they will await the Senate’s budget resolution and forgo developing their own in the meantime. The House may likely end up adopting the Senate budget resolution and is hoping to have a final, adopted budget resolution before the August recess.
FY 2022 Appropriations
Upon return from recess, the House Appropriations Committee will resume markups of FY 2022 appropriations bills. The subcommittee markup for the Labor-HHS-Education bill is scheduled for July 12, with a full committee markup scheduled thereafter for July 15. Last week, the House Appropriations Committee approved the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies (Agriculture-FDA) appropriations bill, as well as allocations known as 302(b)s for its 12 subcommittees for FY 2022, which includes Labor-HHS-Education and will provide in total more than $1.5 trillion in funding.
Regulatory Update
Last week, CMS kicked off its calendar year (CY) 2022 Medicare payment update cycle with the release of two proposed regulations: the CY 2022 end-stage renal disease (ESRD) prospective payment system (PPS) and the Home Health PPS (WHG summaries here and here). The other major CY 2022 payment updates – the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule, Hospital Outpatient PPS – remain under review at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) but could be released in the near term. Both were slated for release in June per the most recent Unified Agenda.