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Welcome back to this week's edition of the Washington Weekly newsletter - bringing you the latest and greatest policy updates from Washington, D.C.
Supreme Court Blocks Biden Vaccine Rules for Private Employers, Allows Them for Healthcare Workers
The Supreme Court on Thursday, January 13, 2022, blocked the Biden administration’s Covid-19 vaccine-or-testing rules for large private employers, upending the government’s most aggressive effort to combat the pandemic in the workplace. The high court, however, did give the administration more latitude in the healthcare industry, allowing it to impose a vaccine mandate for more than 10 million healthcare workers whose facilities participate in Medicare and Medicaid, a holding that leaves one part of the president’s Covid-19 playbook in place. The private-employer requirements, for businesses with 100 or more employees, would have applied to an estimated 84 million workers. The court’s conservative majority, in an unsigned opinion, said the Biden administration likely didn’t have the unilateral power to impose a mandate that employers ensure their workers were vaccinated or tested every week for Covid-19. Three liberal justices dissented. In allowing the vaccine mandate for healthcare workers, conservatives Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the three liberals to form a 5-4 majority, allowing that requirement to take effect nationwide. “Today’s ruling protects our individual rights and states’ rights to pursue the solutions that work best for their citizens,” said Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, who led a coalition of Republican-leaning states that challenged the OSHA rule. The court’s actions come as Covid-19 has been spreading at record rates in the U.S. Republican-led states and business groups sued to block the federal requirements, arguing the Biden administration was engaged in unlawful overreach that wasn’t rendered permissible by the public-health crisis. Technically, the Supreme Court wasn’t considering the full merits of the administration’s mandates. Instead, the justices heard the cases on an emergency basis to decide whether the regulations could go into effect right now while more detailed litigation continued in the lower courts.
Pelosi Floats Virus Help in Spending Plan
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said there’s an “opportunity” to add federal coronavirus relief aid to a package of legislation funding the government as a February deadline looms. “It is clear from the opportunity that is there and the challenge that is there,” Pelosi said, noting that President Joe Biden’s administration “has not made a formal request for more funding.” Additional funding to help mitigate the effects of the pandemic could be added to a bill that’s needed to fund the government after a stopgap measure runs out on Feb. 18, she said. Two lawmakers last week suggested that additional relief for U.S. restaurants and other service industries hurt by the surge of infections could be added to the spending bills. Sens. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and head of the Small Business Committee, and Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), said they are working to build support for the plan among their colleagues. Pelosi didn’t specify what any extra funding might be used for.
Inflation Remains Obstacle for Biden Agenda
The consumer price index rose 7% in 2021, the largest 12-month increase in inflation since June 1982. Wednesday’s inflation report from the Labor Department could presage a hike in Federal Reserve interest rates as soon as March. President Joe Biden released a statement spinning the report as a sign of progress, saying it “shows a meaningful reduction in headline inflation” in December with falling prices for gas and food. “At the same time, this report underscores that we still have more work to do, with price increases still too high and squeezing family budgets,” Biden said. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) in December identified inflation concerns as one of the reasons he opposes a tax and social spending bill the White House and Democratic leaders on the Hill were pushing. Manchin, who would need to support the legislation for it to pass the evenly-divided Senate, described the new inflation data as “very, very troubling.” Political opponents were quick to criticize the administration’s economic agenda in light of the report. House Ways and Means Committee ranking member Kevin Brady (R-Texas) released a statement blaming Democrats for rising prices due to government spending they have approved. “As Chairman Powell said yesterday, inflation is a severe threat to getting workers off the sidelines and back into the workforce—yet the Biden Administration has ignored it, denied it, and is now passing the buck for their own incompetence,” Brady said, referring to Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s testimony before a Senate committee. Senate Finance Committee ranking member Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) echoed those sentiments in a statement, calling inflation a “stealth tax.” A coalition of dozens of business groups, including GCCA, urged Congress to abandon efforts to pass a budget reconciliation package. The legislation includes a variety of tax hikes on businesses, which we and our coalition partners argued would further fuel inflation.
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CDC Weighs Recommending Better Masks Against Omicron Variant
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is considering updating its mask guidance to recommend that people opt for the highly protective N95 or KN95 masks worn by health-care personnel, if they can do so consistently. With the highly transmissible omicron variant spurring record levels of infections and hospitalizations, experts have repeatedly urged the Biden administration to recommend the better-quality masks rather than cloth coverings to protect against an airborne virus, and to underscore the importance of masking. When the CDC issued its initial mask guidance in 2020, health officials did not urge the use of the more protective face coverings out of concern that health workers might be unable to get them. But health officials said there are no longer serious shortages of N95 masks. The updated guidance is expected to say that the best mask is the one that is worn consistently and correctly. N95 masks, which were predominantly used in health-care and industrial settings before the pandemic, are supposed to be individually fitted and are sometimes hard to wear all day, physicians and other health-care personnel have said. The CDC guidance is expected to say that if people can “tolerate wearing a KN95 or N95 mask all day, you should.”
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