In his January 12, State of The Union address President Obama shied away from a list of specific policy proposals but he did single out a few areas including the drug use issue that is starting to rattle the foster care numbers. President Obama said, "Helping people who are battling prescription drug abuse and heroin
On Wednesday, January 20 the Senate Agriculture Committee is scheduled to take up a child nutrition bill that it is hoped will strengthen and expand a number of services that effect food access for children and their families. The meeting can be viewed at that time at that time through the Senate website at www.ag.senate.gov.
The President will deliver his State of the Union address on Tuesday, January 12 for the final time in his presidency. The speech is expected to be more general in tone than in the past speeches with the President focusing on his larger vision for the country rather than specific programs or budget requests. The
When Congress returns this week it will mark the beginning of a very short congressional calendar. The President is scheduled to deliver his last State of the Union address on January12 which will unofficially begin the new budget debate for FY 2017. The official budget will come a little more than four weeks later in
Appropriations decisions are likely to come to a head in the next ten days. The deadline before the government runs out of funding is December 11. While staffers and committee members continued to work on allocating funding between the 12 spending categories and various priorities within those 12 committee jurisdictions it is still unclear how
Appropriations staffers and committee members continued to work toward beating a December 11 deadline when the government will run out of money. Despite the ongoing work it is unclear whether or not issues around policy riders and, as of last week the issue of Syrian refugees, will prevent a deal before the government shuts down.
On Wednesday, October 28, Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WS) became the new Speaker of the House when he won approval by the House Republican caucus. The action became final the next day when the full House as is the custom confirmed the caucus action. Ryan received 200 votes within the Republican caucus. At the same time
Shortly after Republicans approved Ryan as the Speaker, the House approved the negotiated budget deal by a vote of 266 to 167 with 187 Democrats and 79 Republicans supporting it. It was immediately sent over to the Senate using a previous bill that allowed Senate leaders to fast track the debate on the deal. Early
With a second surprise announcement about the House leadership in less than a month (Boehner retires, McCarthy pulls out of race) the Congress may be heading for a real crisis. Congressman Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) had what was considered close relationships to many of the most conservative members of the House Republican caucus but that did
On Monday, October 5 the American Youth Policy Forum sponsored a briefing that focused on how state and local child welfare programs address the challenge of converting research to inform policy and practice decisions in the child welfare field. The research was funded by the W. T. Grant Foundation in an effort to improve the