House GOP adds socially conservative riders to government health funding bill

House Republicans have issued several revisions to the 2024 Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill with a variety of socially conservative policy riders and proposed amendments that will face an uphill battle in the full House and in the Senate.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) announced shortly after his election that the controversial fiscal bill will be up for possible floor action in the week of Nov. 13 after discharging the bill from committee. This means that the bill is expected to head to the floor without markup from the full Appropriations Committee.

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The bill prevents fiscal 2024 appropriations from going to any postgraduate physician training program, including residency programs, that requires students to participate in induced abortions or counseling for induced abortions. If passed, the provision would give federal funding for training programs that allowed physicians to voluntarily opt-in to abortion provision training.

Another element of the bill that has long been debated prohibits the Department of Health and Human Services from declaring a public health emergency related to gun violence.

Several representatives have proposed amendments that would limit the influence of critical race theory in medical care and medical education.

The majority of the bill, however, has more targeted measures.

Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Greg Murphy (R-NC) had their riders adopted into the legislation to reduce the salaries of several prominent public health officials to $1. This includes HHS Sec Xavier Becerra, HHS Assistant Sec. Rachel Levine, and Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Chiquita Brooks-LaSure.

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona would also be faced with a pay cut should the bill pass as written.

Murphy’s rider blocking the implementation of new CMS rules regarding mandatory minimum staffing in nursing homes has also been accepted into the revised bill.

Republican lawmakers in both the House and Senate have voiced their opposition to CMS’s proposed rules that would require lower nurse-to-patient ratios in Medicare-approved nursing homes, which would necessitate over 75% of facilities needing to hire more staff.

A CMS spokesperson previously told the Washington Examiner that, despite Republican pushback, the agency “is unwavering in its commitment to improving the safety and quality of care for the more than 1.2 million residents receiving care in Medicare and Medicaid-certified nursing homes.”

A rider proposed by Rep. William Ogles (R-TN) was also accepted into the bill that would prohibit funds from being used to impose a nationwide COVID-19 mask mandate.

Rep. George Santos (R-NY) proposed a similar amendment suggesting that none of the funds in the appropriations bill be directed toward the implementation and enforcement of “any vaccine mandate.” The amendment has not yet been adopted.

Critics have said that Johnson has little experience with healthcare policy and has been under the advisement of Energy and Commerce Committee Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) and Subcommittee on Health Chairman Brett Guthrie (R-KY).

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The conservative riders and proposed amendments will have a difficult time passing in the Democrat-controlled Senate, likely necessitating compromising revisions.

The Senate has not yet announced when it will bring its Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill to the floor.