Congress passes bipartisan debt ceiling bill with spending caps
In early June, the House and Senate passed the Fiscal Responsibility Act (H.R. 3746) to avoid a government default. The legislation suspends the debt ceiling until 2025 and enacts the following spending caps:
- For FY24, non-defense discretionary spending will be held roughly flat.
- For FY25, non-defense spending will be limited to an increase by 1%.
The bill includes an incentive for lawmakers to pass all twelve annual spending bills instead of a continuing resolution by January 1 in both FY24 and FY25. If Congress fails to do so, it will be forced to automatically reduce overall spending for all programs by 1%.
The legislation also enacts other funding and policy changes, including but not limited to:
- rescinding unspent emergency COVID-19 federal funds;
- modifying work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Program; and
- reinstating federal student loan payments.
President Biden signed the bill into law on June 3, just ahead of the June 5 deadline. In the House, the bill passed with 314-117 votes, with 165 Democrats and 149 Republicans voting yes. In the Senate, the bill passed 63-36, with 44 Democrats, 2 Independents, and 17 Republicans voting yes.
President Biden announces his nominee to direct the NIH
On May 15, President Biden officially announced his intentions to nominate Monica Bertagnolli as the new director for the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Per the White House press release, Bertagnolli is a world-renowned surgical oncologist, cancer researcher, educator, and physician-leader who has the vision and leadership needed to deliver on NIH’s mission to seek fundamental knowledge and promote human health.
President Biden said, “Dr. Bertagnolli has spent her career pioneering scientific discovery and pushing the boundaries of what is possible to improve cancer prevention and treatment for patients and ensuring that patients in every community have access to quality care.”
Bertagnolli currently serves as the Director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and is the first woman to serve as NCI Director. Previously, she served as a professor of surgery in the field of surgical oncology at Harvard Medical School, a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and a member of the Gastrointestinal Cancer Treatment and Sarcoma Centers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. She graduated from Princeton University with a B.S. in engineering and attended medical school at the University of Utah.