Last Wednesday, the Senate gave approval to Eric Hargan to the position of Deputy Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. As the official second in command at HHS, Hargan becomes the acting HHS leader. For a week, Deputy Assistant Health Secretary Don Wright served as Acting Secretary. Hargan served at HHS in
Now that the House has acted on their version of a home visiting reauthorization (the Increasing Opportunity and Success for Children and Parents through Evidence-Based Home Visiting Act (H.R. 2824)), and the Senate has their version of the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) program, (the Strong Families Act of 2017), advocates are strategizing how to extend
The Administration is seeking $29 billion in emergency/disaster relief funds. Of the total $16 billion will replenish the disaster insurance fund. The rest is mainly for Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico, with approximately a half billion to address wildfires in the west. House Republican conservatives are demanding offsets, but that is unlikely to gather total conservative
Last week Congressional Republicans released an outline of their tax reform proposal for 2017. They hope to move the package on a fast track both in process and time. The process part is that they will try and use a new 2018 budget resolution and reconciliation tool to fast track the legislation through the Senate
On Friday evening September 29, Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price stepped down unexpectedly during the controversy over his private chartered flights. The resignation marks the first cabinet secretary to leave the Trump Administration less than eight months after he was confirmed by the Senate. Deputy Assistant Health Secretary Don Wright was appointed
Around the same time that the latest repeal of the ACA was gaining traction, Senate leaders lead by Budget Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-TN) indicated that Republican leadership had come to an agreement on a budget resolution for 2018. The budget resolution is significant in that it could clear the way for a fast track
On Thursday, September 14, Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) and Congressman Bobby Scott (D-VA) introduced the Child Care for Working Families Act. The new legistaion attempts to set down a strong marker for what is truly needed to make improvements in the nation’s child care and early childhood education systems across the fifty states. It would
On Wednesday, September 13, the U.S. Census Bureau released new data on poverty and health care coverage for the year 2016. According to data released by the U.S. Census Bureau, 18 percent of children in the U.S. were living in poverty in 2016. While that is a slight improvement over the previous year children continue
Last weeks’ presidential-congressional agreement on a December 8, extension of the debt ceiling and FY 2018 appropriations has both political as well as practical effects. For starters FEMA receives some much-needed immediate funds to help address the hurricanes. The nearly $15 billion is just a down payment and will have to be addressed again very
Here at CWLA, we have been in constant communication with our colleagues in Texas and Louisiana as they face the extraordinary challenges brought by Hurricane Harvey. Before implementing any special efforts, we want to find out what, specifically, these colleagues require from us. We will be meeting via conference call with CWLA members in Texas