Greene County Democrat

Tag: Senate

  • Newswire: RFK Jr. set to face Bill Cassidy in back-to-back Senate hearings

    Newswire: RFK Jr. set to face Bill Cassidy in back-to-back Senate hearings

    RFK Jr. talking with Senator Bill Cassidy

    by Berkeley Lovelace Jr., NBC News

    Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. heads to Capitol Hill on Wednesday on a potential collision course with the Republican who helped put him in the job: Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana.

    It will be Kennedy’s first appearance in nearly a year before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, which Cassidy chairs. The senator, who is up for re-election, cast the key vote to confirm Kennedy last year after securing a series of promises from Kennedy, including that he would preserve federal vaccine recommendations and regularly appear before the committee.

    Kennedy has not kept those promises; Cassidy has limited his criticism of the health secretary to posts on social media and press statements.

    Cassidy, however, has been vocal in his support of vaccines, including during the March confirmation hearing for Dr. Casey Means, President Donald Trump’s pick for surgeon general. Means is a Kennedy ally who has questioned vaccines. Cassidy has not yet scheduled a vote to advance Means’ nomination.

    Wednesday’s hearing will mark Kennedy’s first appearance before Cassidy since a confrontational Senate Finance Committee hearing in September and could offer the clearest sign yet of how the senator plans to handle those concerns. A spokesperson for Cassidy declined to comment on what the senator plans to ask Kennedy.

    Kennedy is also expected to face questions from Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., who is retiring next year and has said he plans to speak more freely about his views, including on members of Trump’s Cabinet. (Tillis voted to confirm all members of Trump’s Cabinet in 2025.)

    Kennedy will appear before the Finance Committee in the morning and the HELP Committee in the afternoon.

    In January, Kennedy overhauled the childhood vaccine schedule, reducing the number of recommended diseases for children to be vaccinated against from 18 to 11 — a move Cassidy later said in a post on X would “make America sicker.” The changes removed recommendations that all babies should be protected against hepatitis A, hepatitis B, RSV, dengue, and two types of bacterial meningitis.

    In March, a federal judge blocked those changes and put on hold the new members Kennedy appointed to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory committee. The administration hasn’t yet appealed the ruling. But Kennedy signed off on new rules for the committee that could make it easier to work around the court’s decision.

    Dorit Reiss, a vaccine policy expert at the University of California Law School, San Francisco, said she hopes that Cassidy will hold Kennedy accountable.

    “There’s a raging measles outbreak,” Reiss said. “Kennedy may have given lukewarm endorsements to the MMR vaccine but, as far as I know, hasn’t made any efforts to call on people to vaccinate or to do anything practical to reduce the risk.”

    Kennedy has already testified at five congressional hearings over the last week. He has faced blistering criticism from Democrats over his vaccine policy and overhaul of federal health agencies. At one hearing, Kennedy said the U.S. has “done better” at preventing measles than any other country.

    “Judging by Secretary Kennedy’s recent testimony to Congress, he is likely to continue to gaslight the Senate Finance and HELP committees,” said Lawrence Gostin, director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University. “He continues using terms like ‘world-class science,’ ‘rigorous evidence,’ and ‘radical transparency,’ when in fact he has done the opposite.”

    In an emailed statement, Andrew Nixon, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, called what Gostin said “a baseless accusation that doesn’t match reality.”

    Another potential wild card for Kennedy is Tillis, a Republican who is not seeking re-election, Reiss said.

    During the September hearing, she noted, Tillis suggested that Kennedy had broken his promises on vaccines, saying, “I do also believe that some of your statements seem to contradict what you said in the prior hearing.”

    “The fact that you’re a Republican doesn’t mean that you need to blindly accept [Kennedy’s actions],” Reiss said.

    A spokesperson for Tillis did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    Kennedy could also face questions about his recent comments to overhaul the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a federal panel that makes recommendations on preventive services, including cancer screenings, as well as on Trump’s executive order meant to spur research into psychedelics.

  • Newswire: U. S. Senate passes most robust Affordable Housing Bill in decades

    Newswire: U. S. Senate passes most robust Affordable Housing Bill in decades

    Affordable housing has long been one of the biggest roadblocks to wealth generation for the average American. Home building has never truly recovered since the 2008 financial crisis, with housing demand far outpacing supply. In an effort to address the issue, the Senate passed a bipartisan bill to dramatically increase the supply of affordable housing nationwide.

    According to NBC News, the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, drafted by Sens. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), passed in a 89 to 10 vote. “It’s Democrats. It’s Republicans. It’s pieces they built out together,” Warren told NPR. “That is the strength of this bill.”

    “It’s not a Republican issue or a Democrat Issue,” Scott said ahead of the vote. “It’s an issue about helping moms like the one who raised me, the amazing woman that she was, become homeowners.”

    It’s rare to see this level of bipartisanship in modern-day U.S. politics, but affordability is one of the top issues facing everyday Americans. With a growing number of voters feeling like the Trump administration, and by extension, the GOP, aren’t doing anything to address the issue, this bill gives both Democrats and Republicans a needed victory ahead of the midterms.

    The 303-page bill takes a two-pronged approach toward creating more affordable housing. It creates grants and pilot programs to encourage the building of more affordable housing, while also “cutting regulatory red tape, lowering costs and expanding housing supply while generating no new spending,” according to Scott.

    “If we want to bring down the cost of housing, we’ve got to build a lot more,” said Warren. “And what I love about this bill is that it has more than 40 different provisions in it, all of which aim in the same direction, which is to give a push toward building more housing.”

    The bill also targets the growing trend of private equity firms and hedge funds buying homes in a section called “Homes Are For People, Not Corporations,” which “prohibits large institutional investors from purchasing certain single-family homes, in an effort “to promote home ownership opportunities for American families, not corporations.” One of the key provisions in this section requires corporations to sell any single-family homes they may own after seven years.

    This section received the most push back from several congress members, including Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), the lone Democrat who voted against the bill.

    “There’s literally no reason for this,” Schatz said on the floor. “Anyone who wants to build housing and then provide it for rent is going to be forced to sell after seven years. … A lot of these folks are not actually in a position to sell after seven years. They will not have made their money back.”

    It appears Schatz is missing the point of this provision, which seems to be discouraging the slow creep of private equity into the housing market.

    The House passed a similar, more limited version of the bill last month. Many of the provisions of the House bill were included in the Senate’s version, so hopefully, it won’t take long for the House to reconcile the two bills. Should the bill pass in the House, it’s unclear if President Donald Trump would sign it, as he recently said he would refuse to sign any legislation until the SAVE America Act passes. House Speaker Mike Johnson recently told his colleagues that Trump privately relayed his laser focus on the SAVE America Act and said, “no one gives a (bleep) about housing.”

    White House Spokesperson Davis Ingle told NBC News that Johnson’s account was “not accurate whatsoever” and that Trump “has been laser-focused on making housing more affordable.” You know, I have serious doubts about that.

    At a time when prices are going up for basically every essential good as a result of his misguided war in Iran, it would behoove Trump to give a damn about affordable housing.

  • No breakthrough in Supreme Court dispute between Obama, Republicans

    By Ayesha Rascoe, Reuters

    U.S. President Obama meets with the bipartisan leaders of the Senate to discuss the Supreme Court vacancy left by the death of Justice Scalia, at the White House in Washington
    U.S. President Barack Obama (3rd R) meets with the bipartisan leaders of the Senate to discuss the Supreme Court vacancy left by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, at the White House in Washington March 1, 2016. From L-R: Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), Vice President Joe Biden, Obama, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA). REUTERS/Yuri Gripas

    U.S. President Barack Obama (3rd R) meets with the bipartisan leaders of the Senate to discuss the Supreme Court vacancy left by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, at the White House in Washington March 1, 2016.

    WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republican leaders of the Senate on Tuesday rebuffed President Barack Obama’s appeal for hearings and a vote on his U.S. Supreme Court nominee during a face-to-face meeting that failed to budge them from their vow to block any nominee he offers.
    Obama, planning to name a replacement for the late Justice Antonin Scalia in the coming weeks, huddled with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley in the White House Oval Office for less than an hour.”Senator Grassley and I made it clear that we don’t intend to take up a nominee or to have a hearing,” McConnell told reporters after the meeting.
    The meeting failed to produce any progress on how to proceed with finding a replacement for Scalia, a long-serving conservative justice who died on Feb. 13.
    McConnell and Grassley are insistent that Obama not pick a nominee and leave the decision to his successor, who takes office next January after the Nov. 8 U.S. presidential election. Obama is insistent that it is the Republican-led Senate’s constitutional duty to act on his nominee.
    “They made clear in their meeting with the president that they’re not going to change their mind just because the president says so,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said of the Republicans.