The bill that is still awaiting the President’s signature (will he or won’t he?) includes a section that aims to address some of the current environmental and climate concerns.
It address a number of issue areas, such as emission reduction, carbon capture and utilization, and innovative manufacturing. This section of the bill is Division S.
Even as the President now has Washington guessing about what will happen next to on the COVID/omnibus front, we continue to read through the package.
The joint COVID/appropriations legislation contains a whole host of bills that are not related to COVID or appropriations, which is not that unusual for a “Christmas tree” bill. The inclusion of the Energy Act of 2020 (Div. Z) is a case in point.
The energy legislation contains a slew of energy innovation and research-related provisions, including the reauthorization of the ARPA-E program. In addition, it addresses a host of energy research areas, such as fusion, renewable energy, energy storage, carbon management/removal, electric grid security, and mineral security. A section-by-section summary of that portion of the legislative package, compiled by the Senate Energy Committee, is available here.
We will continue to review the bill.
With a video in which he called it a “disgrace,” President Trump yesterday blasted the COVID/omnibus spending package that was only adopted on Monday. His biggest complaints seem to be that the stimulus checks of $600 per person for families making less than $75,000 a year is not big enough and that the bill contains too much “wasteful” spending. He wants the checks to be at least $2,000.
Smaller checks were pushed by Congressional Republicans and his own Treasury secretary. Democratic leaders have, at least publicly, seized on the remarks to try to make another push on larger stimulus checks. Not surprisingly, the video is now leading many to wonder whether Trump will veto the measure, which took six months to craft.
Trump must sign the measure by next Monday in order to prevent a shutdown.
Read more about the developments here in Politico, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and Axios.
The federal relations team continues to read through the 5,600-page package and will provide updates with items of interest throughout the process.
Initially, we have come across these education-related provisions:
Reports on Tuesday indicate President-elect Biden will name Miguel Cardona, the education commissioner of Connecticut, to be US Secretary of Education-designee. Cardona is a public school educator who started his career as a 4th grade teacher.
Read more here.