US Postal Service Faces $11 Billion Mail Truck Fight

The U.S. Capitol dome is seen reflected in a puddle in Washington
ERIN SCOTT
By Yuval Rosenberg

Happy Groundhog Day!
Punxsutawney Phil today predicted six more weeks of winter,
while Staten Island Chuck, another purportedly prognosticating
rodent, called an early spring. But our favorite holiday tidbit
came from
Connor O’Brien, a reporter covering Congress for
Politico: "If appropriators see their shadow today, then we’re in
for another six-week CR."

Lawmakers Push Toward a Full-Year Spending Deal

Top lawmakers met Wednesday for the second straight day to
negotiate a spending deal for the rest of fiscal year 2022 and
avoid a government shutdown ahead of a February 18 deadline, when
current funding expires.

Republicans on Wednesday reportedly proposed a counter offer for
full-year spending, delaying a planned meeting of House and Senate
appropriations leaders as Democrats considered the offer.

The offer "reflected a new seriousness among negotiators who
until now hadn’t traded such proposals," The Washington Post’s Tony
Romm
writes. But the two sides still have serious
differences to overcome. For example, Senate Minority Leader Mitch
McConnell (R-KY) signaled Wednesday that Republicans may object to
a fresh round of pandemic relief funding. "Let’s start the
discussion by talking about repurposing the hundreds of billions
already sitting in the pipeline," McConnell said on the Senate
floor.

The annual funding bill has been delayed by political disputes
over provisions including the Hyde amendment restricting federal
money for abortion. The hold-ups have prevented President Biden and
Democrats from securing funding for their priorities while the
government to continue to operate under stopgap measures that have
kept the lights on at federal agencies while largely extending
Trump-era spending levels.

"Republicans appeared content to continue in that vein,
essentially dealing a political blow to Biden’s agenda in the
process," Romm reports. "But the two sides have come to see mutual
benefit in striking a longer-term resolution, putting aside their
differences at a moment when the United States continues to
confront the pandemic at home and faces new diplomatic challenges
abroad. The omicron variant of the coronavirus has sparked fresh
discussions about the need for another round of federal aid, while
the intensifying standoff between Russia and Ukraine has emboldened
a Republican-led push to spend more on defense."

What’s next: Lawmakers have just over two weeks before
the February 18 deadline, and lots of details to work out. Sen.
Richard Shelby (R-AL), the top Republican on the Senate
Appropriations Committee reportedly emerged from a meeting of House
and Senate appropriators to tell reporters that the negotiators are
still seeking an "agreement on our principles, then the [spending]
top line will follow." He added that the two sides are still trying
to hash out the right balance between "social spending versus
national security." Democrats have pressed for significant
increases in non-defense spending while Republicans have pushed for
"parity" in defense and non-defense funding.

Millions Could Lose Medicaid Coverage After Historic Gains

More than 12 million people gained health care coverage through
Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program since the
beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, with total enrollment
reaching 83.6 million in July 2021, up from 71.2 million in
February 2020.

Insurance enrollments through the health care marketplaces
established by the Affordable Care Act have also risen to record
levels, with 14.5 million people signing up for coverage this
year.

As Larry Levitt of the Kaiser Family Foundation
put it Wednesday, "We've never seen a safety net like
this."

Yet many of the gains in health coverage may prove to be
temporary. Once the pandemic is officially over, states — which
have been required to maintain coverage throughout the crisis —
will once again start combing through their Medicaid rolls to
remove those who are no longer eligible. As many as 15 million
people could lose their coverage through that process, the Urban
Institute says, including upwards of 6 million children.

Although the Biden administration recently extended the official
state of emergency by three months, to April 15, state officials
assume the Medicaid pullback will begin sometime in 2022. Some
health officials say that the lack of a firm deadline will only
make the process more difficult, and many are concerned that states
will start removing people without properly informing them or
giving them a chance to prove their eligibility, which typically
hinges on employment, income levels and proper paperwork.

"That’s really one of the big risks, that people will be
eligible but become unenrolled just because they don’t get the
message and don’t know how to continue their coverage and are just
out of the habit, quite honestly, of doing renewals and
redeterminations after almost two years," Suzanne Bierman,
administrator of Nevada’s Medicaid program,
told Politico.

Some states are expected to pursue Medicaid disenrollment
aggressively. Ohio, for example, will use an outside vendor to
automate the certification process over a 90-day period, with the
vendor claiming a percentage of the money saved by removing
ineligible people. Other states are also expected to move quickly,
driven in part by the elimination of extra Medicaid matching funds
provided by Congress during the pandemic, which will be eliminated
at the end of the quarter in which the health emergency is declared
to be over.

Democrats have proposed to continue the extra Medicaid funding
as part of their Build Back Better package, but that bill has
stalled in Congress and faces an uncertain future.

Biden Admin Challenges $11.3 Billion USPS Contract for New
Fleet, Citing Climate Risk

The U.S. Postal Service plans to spend up to $11.3 billion on a
fleet of as many as 165,000 new delivery trucks over the next
decade — but The Washington Post’s Anna Phillips and Jacob Bogage
reported Wednesday that those plans face renewed resistance from
the Biden administration, which is urging the Postal Service to
reconsider its intention to buy mostly gas-powered trucks.

President Biden has set a goal of converting all federal cars
and trucks to clean energy, the Post reports, and Postal Service
vehicles account for a third of the government’s fleet. "The Postal
Service’s proposal as currently crafted represents a crucial lost
opportunity to more rapidly reduce the carbon footprint of one of
the largest government fleets in the world," Vicki Arroyo, the
EPA’s associate administrator for policy, wrote in a letter to a
USPS official.

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a Trump appointee, says the
Postal Service can’t afford to buy more electric vehicles. "While
we can understand why some who are not responsible for the
financial sustainability of the Postal Service might prefer that
the Postal Service acquire more electric vehicles, the law requires
the Postal Service to be self-sufficient," agency spokeswoman
Kimberly Frum said in a statement to the Post.

But DeJoy’s plan for a much-needed upgrading of mail truck fleet
has drawn criticism from the Biden administration,
environmentalists and others, with the EPA warning that the Postal
Service’s environmental analysis and cost calculations were biased
and seriously flawed. "There were just pages and pages of detailed
economic and environmental analysis by EPA that the Postal Service
either ignored or dismissed with a rhetorical wave of its hand,"
John Walke, head of the clean-air project at the Natural Resources
Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group, told the
Post.


Read the full story at The Washington Post.

Number of the Day: 13.5 Million Years

Deaths from Covid-19 have taken away roughly 13.5 million
years of life from the U.S. population, according to a
new report from researchers at the University of
Southern California’s Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and
Economics. The daunting figure comes from looking at the age at
which people died from the virus and calculating how many years
they would have had left according to standard actuarial tables.
"It’s an immense number and one that necessarily keeps growing,"

says The Washington Post’s Philip Bump. "A similar
analysis from the team last summer put the total at about 9 million
years of life — meaning that the total has grown by about 50
percent since then."

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