The Senate and House of Representatives are in recess until November 12, when Members of the 113th Congress will return for what will likely be an abbreviated session, punctuated by action on a funding bill to keep government offices open after the expiration of the current Continuing Resolution which runs through December 11, 2014.  Whether that punctuation is a comma, colon, or exclamation mark remains a question (?).

Makeup of the 113th Congress (as of 10/13/2014):

HOUSE       199 D   233 R
SENATE      55 D      45 R
(incl 2 Independents caucusing with the Majority Democrats)

Prediction for the 114th Congress (published 10/13/2014):

HOUSE       202 D    233 R
SENATE       52 D      48 R
(incl 3 Independents caucusing with the Majority Democrats through 4/19/2015)

From Politico: Hill Staff Health Insurance Secure (For Now)...

Federal Judge Tosses Ron Johnson’s Obamacare Lawsuit

By Niels LesniewskiPosted at 8:32 p.m. on July 21, 2014

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A federal judge based in Green Bay has tossed a Sen. Ron Johnson’s Obamacare lawsuit targeting the health benefits for members of Congress and their staff.

The court dismissed the lawsuit, which contended the Obama administration decision to grant employer contributions for health plans purchased through the District of Columbia’s Obamacare health exchange ran afoul of the law.

Chief Judge William C. Griesbach of the Eastern District of Wisconsin ruled that Johnson and fellow plaintiff Brooke Ericson lacked standing, siding with the argument made by the government’s lawyers.

In making his judgement, Griesbach worked through several arguments that explained how the Office of Personnel Management regulation harmed the plaintiffs, finding none of them persuasive.

“The question of the legality of the regulation has not been determined yet; although Plaintiffs believe the regulation is unlawful, such a belief cannot be enough to create standing because that would open the door to any uninjured party who had a generalized grievance with agovernment regulation,” the judge wrote. “Under such an approach, there would be no principled limit on standing because a plaintiff need only allege a belief that the challenged regulation is illegal.”

Griesbach also dismissed the idea that the subsidized health care itself constituted an injury, rather than a benefit.

“Even assuming that one or both Plaintiffs selected a Gold-tier plan on the DC SHOP Exchange and received the subsidy as allowed under the OPM rule, it is hard to understand how this would constitute an ‘injury’ to either person,” Griesbach wrote.

Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin, responded to the judge’s ruling in a statement highlighting that the court did not reach the substantive question in the case, dismissing it (as the Obama administration had argued it should be) based on lack of standing.

“The Obama administration violated its own signature health care law by giving special treatment to members of Congress and their staffs. I believe that this executive action by the Obama administration is unlawful and unfair, and that it is only one of many examples of this president’s abuse of his constitutional duty,” Johnson said in a statement. “Unfortunately, those actions will go unchallenged for now, because the district court granted the administration’s motion to dismiss based on the legal technicality of standing.”

Johnson was not prepared to announce a next move as of Monday evening. Another senator, Republican David Vitter of Louisiana, has pursued the issue from a different angle, regularly seeking votes on an amendment that could negate the OPM rule.

“Americans increasingly — and correctly — believe that their government in Washington is out of control, out of touch and lawless. By its decision today, the court has chosen not to address the important constitutional issues at hand. My legal team and I will carefully review the decision before determining our next step in this important constitutional dispute,” Johnson said.

“First, there is nothing in the Constitution stipulating that all wrongs must have remedies, much less that the remedy must lie in federal court,” Griesbach wrote. “In fact, given the Constitution’s parsimonious grant of judicial authority, just the opposite is true.”

FY 2015 Funding Update (sort of...)

On Tuesday, June 10th, the United States Senate Subcommittee on Labor, HHS, Education and Related Agencies Appropriations approved their version of a fiscal year (FY) 2015 appropriations bill.  The next step is having the full Senate Appropriations Committee meet to approve the Subcommittee product.  But, that meeting has been postponed indefinitely in the midst of continuing controversy over a series of riders some lawmakers would like to attach to the measure.   

The details of the Senate subcommittee markup have not been released publicly, but according to unofficial reports the appropriations bill would provide the Corporation for National and Community Service with $1.065 billion for fiscal year 2015, an increase of $15 million. The proposed legislation would expand AmeriCorps by 1,000 positions and specifically and unequivocally reject the Administration's proposal to restructure and cut the Senior Corps programs.  (Absent full Senate Appropriations Committee action, the official text (and substantiation of the Senior Corps policy victory) will likely never be published.

The U.S. House Appropriations Subcommittee on LHHS/Ed is expected to take up their markup in July, possibly following subcommittee Chairman Jack Kingston's July 22nd runoff election for the Georgia Republican Senate nomination.

And what of the future of all FY 2015 appropriations?  With the recent runoff survival of Mississippi's Thad Cochran (R-MS) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-KY) pronouncements of what life would be like under his leadership in a Republican-controlled Senate, odds are even more likely that final decisions on FY 2015 appropriations will be held off until after the November mid-term elections.  In fact, rumor has it that a Continuing Resolution is already in the making to fund government activities through the election -- Happy Thanksgiving.  Note that a "CR" would like retain the status quo in program funding -- good news for Senior Corps programs but bad news for early childhood programming which got a significant boost in Chairman Harkin's bell lap!

Focus on the Senior Corps: Obama Target for FY 2015 Cuts!

Statement of

Alan G. Lopatin

Washington Representative, National Senior Corps Association

March 11, 2014

It is with sadness that I appear on behalf of the National Senior Corps Association and the more than 300,000 older Americans who serve in organized Senior Corps programs to share our deep disappointment over the Administration’s proposal to first cut and then eliminate RSVP, the Senior Companion Program, and the Foster Grandparent Program. 

At a time when experts and nonexperts agree that the health care and annuity costs associated with the retirement of Baby Boomers could bankrupt the country, why in heaven’s name would this Administration seek to curtail the one organized opportunity for seniors to give back to their communities?  As a member of the Leadership Council of Aging Organizations, I sit as one of small handful of “givers” in a room that reflects more the needs of an aging population.  The proposal for cuts and changes in the Senior Corps in this environment is a really dumb idea.

It is difficult to sum up the demise of over 40 years of senior service in two minutes, but efficiency has been the watchword of Senior Corps.

NSCA strongly opposes the move of RSVP funds to the Volunteer Generation Fund (VGP) and elimination of 66% of that line item.  Millions of Americans and thousands of local non-profit organizations will lose services and non-profits will be left without a viable resource to sustain services to the nation’s neediest populations should this proposal be enacted by Congress.

In 2012, there were 296,000 RSVP volunteers, a decrease of over 100,000 volunteers from the 2010 level of engagement when RSVP was reduced by 20% overnight.  By cutting another 66%, RSVP will lose another 195,000 volunteers currently serving – 40,500,000 hours of service which will no longer be delivered through the 65,000 community organizations that collaborate with RSVP.

NSCA strongly opposes the transfer of FGP and SCP to the AmeriCorps management and funding system, proposals to cut back on the service commitment by those senior who serve under the new structure and, at the same time, reducing funding for these opportunities for low-income seniors to serve by over $20 million. 

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On a personal note, I spent over a decade working on Capitol Hill for the House Budget Committee and the House Committee that wrote the national service authorizing law.  And I have worked with the Senior Corps Directors for nearly 20 since.  From my perspective, the President’s Fiscal Year 2015 Budget for the Senior Corps sets a new standard for budget and authorizing audacity – by boasting that this budget “proposes to support a record 114,000 AmeriCorps members” (while conveniently glossing over the accounting gimmick of transferring 30,000 Senior Corps volunteers to AmeriCorps) and highlighting the fact that the transfer will “allow AmeriCorps to surpass the goal of reserving at least 10 percent of member positions for seniors, as laid out in the 2009 Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act” – a provision intended to EXPAND senior opportunities, not contract them.

And, to get even more personal, when I read the budget, I really had to wonder, “was this meant in spite?”  In May, I will celebrate the third anniversary of my 55^th birthday.  Was this budget intended to deny me the chance to serve as a Senior Corps member? 

Thank you for this opportunity and, in advance, for continued opportunities to serve.

Raising the Roof (or Ceiling, as it were)

Effective Friday, February 7, the Treasury will no longer have the authority to issue bonds to pay the federal government's debts.  Within weeks, the cash on hand could run out, and it is conceivable that the federal government could begin to default on some of these debts unless Congress acts to raise the debt ceiling and grant Treasury borrowing authority, again.  However, as we have seen before at times when the debt ceiling has loomed, Congress has a longstanding history of concocting the most complicated path to the inevitable outcome: raising the debt limit.

Unlike the previous three (!) debt ceiling standoffs of recent years, brinksmanship and bravado have not been the focus of the latest effort.  Where in the past, partisans on each side have dug in their heels and made bold statements about what concessions they will demand for their support in raising the debt limit, it appears that the leadership on both sides are looking for the path of least resistance to get a deal done.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said at a news conference, "I think that we're still looking for the pieces to this puzzle.  But look we do not want to default on our debt, and we're not going to default on our debt.  We're in discussions with members about how we can move ahead."

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew has stated, "the bottom line is: Time is short.  Congress needs to act to extend the borrowing authority for our nation, and it needs to act now."  The Secretary has explained that while, in the past, Treasury has been able to use, "extraordinary measures" to keep paying bills for months after hitting the debt ceiling, this time, due to the timing of the current deadline, these extraordinary measures will only give Treasury flexibility through the end of February.

Given the timeline laid out by Treasury, as well as the general tone in Congress, there is a growing consensus that a deal can and will be reached in the coming weeks, which would eliminate a major hurdle as lawmakers and the administration begin preparations for Fiscal Year 2015.  The administration previously announced that the President would release his FY 2015 Budget on March 4.  This timeline has since been updated.  The White House now plans to release its Fiscal 2015 budget proposal in two installments.  The first installment, a topline spending proposal, will be released on March 4.  The second installment, a much more detailed document including the Budget Appendix and the justifications behind the numbers, will be released on March 11.

With the Murray-Ryan Budget Agreement settling the top line numbers for two years (FY 2014 and FY 2015), it is not clear what influence the President's Budget will have on congressional action on the budget this year.  Rumor has it that the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has already decided that the Senate will not be considering a Fiscal Year 2015 Budget Resolution since the December Budget agreement already determined the overall budget numbers.  The bottom line: between the prospect of reaching a clean agreement on the debt ceiling and rallying together around a two-year budget agreement, the President's budget submission is more about meeting the statutory requirements in the Congressional Budget Act than breaking new ground on guidance for the sure-to-be productive election year Congress.

The State of the Union is Ongoing

On Tuesday, January 28, President Barack Obama delivered the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress.  In this rendition of his annual speech, the President outlined his agenda for 2014, some of which recalled past priorities.  He called upon Congress to "make this a year of action."  He also made clear that he was prepared to test the boundaries of his Executive authority if Congress was not prepared to increase its level of activity going forward.

The President proudly pointed out that the nation has reached its lowest unemployment rate in five years, the housing market has largely recovered, and the manufacturing sector is adding jobs for the first time in two decades.

Addressing what many consider the largest political liability facing many Democrats as mid-term elections approach, the President dedicated time to defending the Affordable Care Act, noting that it has helped millions of Americans receive health insurance, and millions more avoid being dropped from their coverage for various conditions.  He chided House Republicans for taking 40 votes to repeal the law, but invited them to come to him with specific suggestions for how to improve it.

Early on in his speech, President Obama reiterated last year's request to Congress to help states make high-quality pre-K available to every four year-old.  He pointed to the research showing the high return on investment that comes from early education, appealing to the economic arguments for this initiative.  Notably, the President did not address the Strong Start for America's Children Act, introduced in both the House and the Senate, ostensibly as the legislative embodiment of last year's request.  President Obama's discussion of pulling together a coalition of elected officials, business leaders, and philanthropists to find ways to get more kids into pre-K while Congress got its act together may have ignored one direct target of exhortation - to stir up support for an existing bicameral (and bipartisan) piece of legislation - and certainly lifted the curtain on a main theme of the evening: telling Congress what he was prepared to do without them if they would not act with him.

One of the priorities that the President announced was raising the minimum wage for federal contract workers to $10.10 per hour.  Under this initiative, starting in 2015, the federal government will begin giving preference to companies that pay workers higher wages going forward, which could raise the pay for as many as 200,000 workers.  However, this measure will only apply prospectively and only to federal contracts.  Raising the federal minimum wage will still require an act of Congress.

President Obama also urged business executives to end discrimination against the long-term unemployed and admonished lawmakers for canceling jobless benefits for those who have been out of work for longer than 26 weeks.  This chapter of the President's address did not contain the same level of with-or-without you plans for the year that marked much of the rest of the speech, but marked a clear priority, and brought to the spotlight what has been a topic of significant debate on Capitol Hill.

Also on the topic of getting the American people back to work, the President called for new investments in job-training programs to make sure that the skills of the employees coming out of the programs are meeting the needs of the employers that are hiring, which will in turn lead to better paying jobs.

On the environmental front, the President announced plans to raise fuel efficiency standards on heavy duty trucks, having already done so for cars and light trucks, and to set limits on carbon pollution from existing power plants.

These topics, among the many others President Obama covered during his more-than-hour-long speech, showed a clear ambition and clear resolve to get something, anything, done during 2014.  However, many agree, the President's goals are not exactly setting the world on fire.  Time will tell how much cooperation the President will get from Congress as he attempts to work his way through his announced agenda, but if he meant what he said Tuesday night, for at least some of the goals, Congress' help would be more of an added bonus.

Better Late Than Never

After years of turmoil, the great machine that is the federal government looks as though it is beginning to run relatively smoothly again.  For years, unable to agree on a budget, Congress funded the government largely formulaically, passing a series of Continuing Resolutions to maintain the status quo.  Finally, on the heels of an October shutdown followed closely by flirtation with a debt default, Congress rolled up its collective sleeves and agreed to a bipartisan budget resolution and then fleshed it out earlier this year with a comprehensive Omnibus Appropriations measure including line-by-line funding for all 12 Appropriations Subcommittee titles.

With President Obama's State of the Union Address before a Joint Session of Congress on January 28, the administration has begun to put together its Fiscal Year 2015 Budget.  By law, the President is required to submit a budget to Congress each year on the first Monday in February -- a deadline President Obama successfully met in 2009 but has failed to meet in the years since. Last year, the President delivered his budget on April 8, more than two months late and after the House and Senate had each passed their own respective budget resolutions.  On January 23, OMB spokesman Steve Posner announced that the President's 2015 Budget will be released on March 4.

"Now that Congress has finished its work on this year's appropriations, the administration is able to finalize next year's budget," Posner said.  "We are moving to complete the budget as quickly as possible to help Congress return to regular order in the annual budget process."

Complicating all of the apparent smooth sailing is the impending debt ceiling debate.  As part of the agreement that reopened the government in October, the statutory limit on the public debt and the Treasury Department's authority to borrow in order to finance deficit spending was extended until February 7.  While Treasury has in the past resorted to "extraordinary measures" to keep the lights on past a lapse in the limit, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew has urged prompt action in February to avoid another government shutdown or possibly even a default on the government's debts.  Notwithstanding the recent run of bipartisan goodwill that has accompanied the December budget agreement and the recent Omnibus Appropriations measure, it remains to be seen whether raising the debt limit will come with any added demands by congressional Republicans -- or concessions by anyone.

Responses to the Treasury Secretary's warning -- with Democrats calling for an immediate clean increase of the debt ceiling and Republicans warning that increasing the debt ceiling without significant concessions would be a clear sign of fiscal irresponsibility -- show that even with the recent bipartisan efforts, when it comes to the core fiscal debates such as this, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Next up: POTUS and SOTU.