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On Tuesday evening, the House passed the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act in a 363-70 vote. The bill will now head to the Senate where it will be voted on before being signed into law.
The bill regularly passes with large bipartisan support and is expected to do so in the Senate.
The $768 billion defense bill will fund the U.S. military in the new year and also reform the military judicial system. It will criminalize sexual harassment and allow violent crimes to be prosecuted without requiring a commander's approval. The bill will also prohibit the use of private funding to deploy any state's National Guard to another state, except for in the case of natural disasters.
Congressional Democrats had considered tying the debt ceiling increase to the defense funding bill, but Republicans opposed the idea. Senate Republicans indicated that they would vote against the combined proposal and accused Democrats of trying to force them into supporting an estimated $30 trillion debt increase, including whatever consequences the increase might have.
So instead, the House is considering a measure to allow the Senate to raise the debt limit with a one-time simple majority vote, rather than requiring the usual 60 votes needed to overcome a Senate filibuster.
If passed, the slim Senate Democratic majority would likely vote to raise the debt limit in order to cover federal spending needs until after the 2022 midterm elections, The Hill reported.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters on Tuesday that he is "confident" he can get 10 Senate Republican votes to approve the one-time simple majority vote.
While estimates vary, without an increase, the government will his its current debt limit somewhere between December 15 and January 28, 2022, according to The Treasury Department and the Bipartisan Policy Center.
The House is also considering two other measures.
One would prevent automatic cuts in Medicare payments. Doctors and hospitals nationwide face a potential loss of billions of federal Medicare dollars due to a combination of cuts that will soon go into effect unless Congress acts.
The "Pay As You Go" Medicare budget requires the federal government to reduce Medicare spending by 4 percent if annual Medicare spending passes a certain point. In this case, the federal government passed that point after the March passage of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act. The act increased Medicare spending to help meet medical and economic needs during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Doctors will also face a 3.75 percent cut to their Medicare payments on January 1, 2022, as a result of expiring pay increases that Congress authorized earlier in the pandemic. In 2019, Congress also delayed a planned 2 percent cut to Medicare which expires at the end of the year.
If Congress doesn't act, hospitals could face a 6 percent reduction in Medicare dollars, and doctors could face up to 10 percent reduction. The reduction could harm medical providers just as the nation experiences a resurgence in COVID-19 cases.
Finally, the House is also considering a measure that would place additional limits on executive power. Its proposals are largely in response to actions taken by Republican former President Donald Trump.
The measure would prohibit presidents from offering pardons in suspiciously corrupt instances, refusing responses to oversight subpoenas, secretly reallocating congressionally-approved funds for other purposes, retaliating against inspectors general and whistle-blowers; as well as accepting payments and gifts while in office.
