WSW’s most recent Business Operations report is available. This edition includes the latest updates on federal COVID-19 vaccination mandates, IRS guidance on the ERTC, and details on tax provisions included in the draft Senate Build Back Better Act (BBBA).
DECEMBER 8, 2021
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will establish and expand partnerships with academic, healthcare, and other organizations to address infection prevention and control (IPC) failure modes; enhance correct implementation of IPC protocols and processes; and strengthen healthcare worker training and competency assessment. This funding opportunity supports activities to assess and remove barriers to success; improve communication of IPC information and instructions to healthcare workers; and understand how to optimize the layout and functional flow of healthcare environments and processes. It will support organizations uniquely positioned to advance the design, delivery, and effectiveness of IPC training, education, and competency assessment to improve healthcare worker IPC practice and increase health department ability to support healthcare IPC and outbreak response. The work conducted supports public health and healthcare practice by informing development of guidance and recommendations; translating guidance and recommendations into practices implementable in diverse healthcare settings; and improving how healthcare and public health personnel are trained and how competencies are assessed.
Through the expansion of experiential training opportunities in nurse-led community-based settings, the purpose of this mobile health training program is to increase and strengthen the diversity, education, and training of the nursing workforce to provide culturally aligned quality care in rural and underserved areas where there are health care disparities related to access and delivery of care. This program will provide enhanced education and training opportunities within collaborative, reciprocal partnerships, utilizing community-based, nurse-led mobile units. This program aims to strengthen the capacity of nursing students to address and manage social determinants of health and improve health equity for vulnerable populations in rural and underserved areas; and to expand on the nursing education provided by emphasizing leadership and effective communication skills as well as innovative technological methods (i.e. telehealth) to deliver quality care in a rural or underserved environment.
National Endowment for the Arts announces 2022 deadlines for Grants for Arts Projects
Through project-based funding, this program supports public engagement with, and access to, various forms of art across the nation, the creation of art, learning in the arts at all stages of life, and the integration of the arts into the fabric of community life. This program funds arts projects in the following disciplines: Artist Communities, Arts Education, Dance, Design, Folk and Traditional Arts, Literary Arts, Local Arts Agencies, Media Arts, Museums, Music, Musical Theater, Opera, Presenting and Multidisciplinary Arts, Theater, and Visual Arts.
The main goal of the Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (S-STEM) program is to enable low-income students with academic ability, talent or potential to pursue successful careers in promising STEM fields. Recognizing that financial aid alone cannot increase retention and graduation in STEM, the program provides awards to institutions of higher education not only to fund scholarships, but also to adapt, implement, and study evidence-based curricular and co-curricular activities that have been shown to be effective supporting recruitment, retention, transfer, student success, academic/career pathways, and graduation in STEM.
The STEM Education Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (STEM Ed PRF) program funds individual and institutional postdoctoral awards designed to enhance the research knowledge, skills, and practices of recent doctoral graduates in STEM, STEM Education, Education, and related disciplines, with a goal of advancing their preparation to engage in fundamental and applied research in STEM education that advances knowledge within the field.
The Understanding the Rules of Life: Emergent Networks (URoL:EN) program aims to develop a predictive understanding of how key properties of living systems emerge from interactions of factors such as genomes, phenotypes, and environments and how emerging networks of organismal, natural, social, and/or human-engineered systems respond to or influence evolving environments. Successful projects of the URoL:EN program are expected to use convergent approaches that explore emergent network properties of living systems across various levels of organizational scale and, ultimately, to contribute to understanding the rules of life through new theories and reliable predictions about the impact of specific environmental changes on behaviors of complex living systems, or engineerable interventions and technologies based on a rule of life to address associated outcomes for societal benefit.
The overarching vision of this program is to support multi-disciplinary research to sustain economic competitiveness, to promote worker well-being, lifelong and pervasive learning, and quality of life, and to illuminate the emerging social and economic context and drivers of innovations that are shaping the future of jobs and work. The specific objectives are to:
Proposals to this program should describe multi-disciplinary or convergent research that addresses technological, human, and societal dimensions of future work. Technological innovations should be integrated with advances in behavioral science, computer science, economic science, engineering, learning sciences, research on adult learning and workforce training, and the social sciences. Proposals that address the impact of large-scale disruptions such as the COVID-19 pandemic on the future of jobs and work are also of interest.
National Science Foundation releases new Smart and Connected Communities solicitation
The Smart and Connected Communities (S&CC) program encourages researchers to work with community stakeholders to identify and define challenges they are facing, enabling those challenges to motivate use-inspired research questions. The S&CC program supports integrative research that addresses fundamental technological and social science dimensions of smart and connected communities and pilots solutions together with communities. Importantly, this program is interested in projects that consider the sustainability of the research outcomes beyond the life of the project, including the scalability and transferability of the proposed solutions.
December 3, 2021
What You Might Have Missed
Congress Passes Continuing Resolution. Last night, Congress passed a continuing resolution (CR) to keep the government funded through February 18, preserving FY21 funding levels. The bill also contains $7 billion to assist in the resettlement of Afghan refugees. While Democrats lamented that the extension was longer than they wanted, a government shutdown was avoided. Keen political observers have noted that Republicans may continue to draw out CRs in an effort to keep funding levels at the same level as it was during the Trump Administration. Please note that this means Community Project Funding and other pending new programs remain in flux.
Reconciliation Updates. While Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has project confidence that the Build Back Better Act (BBBA), otherwise known as the reconciliation bill, will be completed before Christmas, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) is not as certain. Media outlets have reported that she believes the BBBA will not pass until after Christmas. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) has already gone on record saying that he believes a vote should be delayed until 2022. One key sticking point includes the state and local tax (SALT) deduction.
2022 House Calendar Released. On Tuesday, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) released the House calendar for 2022, which begins on January 10, 2022. You can find it here.
What You Should Be Watching
A Combined National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)/Debt Ceiling Increase. This week, the NDAA, which has been approved by Congress every year since 1961, stalled 50-50 in the Senate. At the same time, the Treasury Department expects the debt ceiling to be reached on or around December 15. So, legislative leaders in the House and Senate are discussing whether to to combine both bills, with some arguing that the debt limit is a national security issue. This is a major development and something your WSW team will continue to monitor.
House Democratic Retirements Grow. As of Wednesday, 19 House Democrats have retired, with House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee Chairman Peter DeFazio (D-OR) joining their ranks. This figure, at this point, outpaces the number of Democratic retirements leading up to the 2010 midterms – the last major wave year for House Republicans.
Redistricting Update. While redistricting has slowed down in the runup to the holidays, here are the current figures on anticipated Congressional outcomes:
December 3, 2021
December 3 2021 WSW Business Operations report is available. This report includes the latest on the various COVID-19 vaccine mandates as well as other developments in Washington that could affect business operations.
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November 19, 2021
Following weeks and months of negotiation, as well as last night’s record-breaking “filibuster” by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, the House passed the Build Back Better Act (BBBA) by a vote of 220-213. After analyzing the bill, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said it would increase the deficit by more than $367 billion over 10 years. However, that estimate does not include the revenue that could be generated by increasing IRS enforcement, which the CBO suggested would be about $207 billion. This “scoring” of the legislation was a key request of several House moderates as they weighed whether they would support the bill.
Here’s what is in the $1.75 trillion bill, among other provisions:
Here’s how it is being paid for:
The biggest caveat is that this bill will likely change dramatically in the Senate. Already, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) has expressed skepticism on several of the provisions, including paid family and medical leave and some of the organized labor requirement mandates for certain building projects. Other potential changes include modifying the SALT tax cap provisions and changing provisions related to immigration. In terms of timing, observers have prognosticated that the Senate will likely consider the bill in mid- to late-December, as other priorities must take their attention. This includes raising the debt ceiling and passing a stopgap government funding legislation – both of which expire December 3. Additionally, the Senate parliamentarian needs to go through the reconciliation bill before bringing it to the floor, making sure none of the language runs afoul of the bill’s protections from a Republican filibuster. It should be noted that a Senate-passed bill must then come back to the House, where they will have to vote on that measure.
November 12, 2021
November 12 2021 WSW Business Operations report — WSW’s latest Business Operations report includes an update on the legal challenges facing the OSHA ETS, as well as passage of the bipartisan infrastructure bill – which eliminates the Employee Retention Tax Credit (ERTC) for Q4 2021.
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November 5, 2021
As many of you know, yesterday, OSHA finally issued its long-awaited COVID-19 vaccination and testing Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) for private businesses with 100 or more employees. WSW has put together the attached overview, which covers the main provisions of the ETS, as well as provides some additional context on the expected legal challenges and other factors that could impact how things move forward.
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This report includes the latest updates on the pending OSHA COVID-19 vaccine Emergency Temporary Standard, as well as the tax provisions in the most recent version of the Build Back Better Act.
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October 22, 2021
This week in Washington has been dominated by a perennial question: when will a deal be struck on the reconciliation bill? With the surface transportation authorization expiring on October 31, time is of the essence. The political back-and-forth has dominated the news, but your WSW will continue to cut through the noise on your behalf.
The Ongoing Reconciliation Conversations. Topline: House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) announced today that he intends for the House to consider the partisan reconciliation bill and bipartisan infrastructure bill next week. President Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer met today to discuss. Last night, at a CNN Townhall, President Biden made a few notable statements regarding reconciliation:
We will address the President’s townhall in greater detail below. But, as it relates to reconciliation, it looks like the final topline number will be between $1.7 and $2 trillion. Sen. Manchin has gone on record that he said a final topline number could be decided today, with additional details to be hammered out by next week – however, several senators seem to believe that they will need to work through the weekend.
As a reminder, House progressives have insisted that they will not allow a vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill until a reconciliation bill is ready to be voted on.
President Biden Participates in CNN Townhall. Last night, President Biden participated in a townhall in Baltimore hosted by CNN. Other than the social spending bill changes that we highlighted above, President Biden underscored a few other policy prerogatives:
You can read the President’s full remarks here.
Changes to U.S. Vaccine Protocol. Yesterday, the FDA authorized booster doses of the COVID-19 vaccines by Moderna and Johnson & Johnson. The FDA also authorized boosters that differ from the vaccine originally given, and is preparing to approve vaccinations to be given to young children. You can read WSW’s full vaccine report here.
Senate Releases Remaining Nine Appropriations Bills; Continuing Resolution Lapses December 3. On Monday, the Senate Appropriations Committee released the remaining nine appropriations bills. You can find them all here. Observers have noted that the bills are fairly partisan, so it remains to be seen how the House and Senate will reconcile their differences so the government doesn’t shutdown. Ultimately, it is likely that yet another continuing resolution will be passed, bringing the deadline to right before Christmas.
Upcoming Gubernatorial Races Tighten Up. In both Virginia and New Jersey, the races for governor are tightening. In Virginia, polls are showing Republican Glenn Youngkin and Democrat Terry McAuliffe neck-and-neck, with some polls putting Youngkin ahead. As population has boomed in Northern Virginia, many observers expected this race to be “Likely Democrat,” and they have had to adjust their priors accordingly. In New Jersey, Republican Jack Ciattarelli is now behind incumbent Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy by single digits. As the President’s approval ratings tumble, these races have the ability to serve as a bellwether for 2022.
Redistricting Outlook. As of October 20, four states have finalized their newly drawn districts: Oregon, Maine, Nebraska, and Indiana (this does not include single-member delegate states). FiveThirtyEight approximates that this has led to Democrats netting two seats so far. However, this will likely change as states like Florida and Texas redraw their maps. You can find FiveThirtyEight’s tracker here.
October 15, 2021
Now that Congress and the Administration have agreed to both a temporary increase in the debt limit and a continued extension of the current federal budget through early December, Washington settled into what will now be weeks if not months of high stakes negotiations to strike a final deal on the budget reconciliation and infrastructure packages.
The Debt Ceiling is Temporarily Raised. On Tuesday, the House passed a $480 billion increase in the country’s borrowing limit. On Thursday, President Biden signed the bill raising the debt limit until about early December. The debt ceiling was expected to be reached this coming Monday. However, early December will now be an especially pressure-filled time in Washington, with the continuing resolution slated to lapse on December 3.
Reconciliation Negotiations Remain in Limbo. Yesterday, news leaked that the White House is “nearing the end of its patience on reconciliation talks… the president is ready to get this done.” While it has been tirelessly reported that Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) hold the keys to the reconciliation package, a savvy article published by NPR reported that Sinema and Manchin’s priorities are wildly different. One key difference is that Manchin supports allowing Medicare to negotiate directly with drug companies, while Sinema does not. While the prevailing total of the package will likely be in the ballpark of $1.5 trillion, it is unclear as to what the final bill will look like.
The Infrastructure Package. The one-month extension of the surface transportation bill lapses on October 31. Since President Biden and House Democrats have made it very clear that the bipartisan infrastructure package won’t pass unless it is paired with a reconciliation bill at the same time, it remains unclear as to what next steps are on dealing with surface transportation reauthorization.
Backup at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. There has been substantial gridlock at Los Angeles ports amid supply chain issues. The situation has become so dire that on Wednesday, President Biden announced expanded hours at both ports. This backup potentially has major implications. This is both major news and something to keep an eye on moving forward, especially as the economy has been plagued by increasing inflation.
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