Twenty Senators—10 Republicans and 10 Democrats—have reached a deal on gun violence prevention. Details of the agreement are not yet public. Reports indicate that the framework includes funding to help states adopt “red flag” laws, funding for school safety and community mental health clinics, telehealth provisions, enhanced background checks and new restrictions on gun sellers. Keep an eye out for the verbiage of the potential red flag laws, which can have implications for healthcare providers. Because this proposal is still a “framework,” it would have to be translated into legislative language and scored by the Congressional Budget Office to move forward. While there is still the possibility for this to unravel, it appears that we may be on the brink of breaking the almost 30-year gap in federal action on gun violence prevention.
For this agreement to become law, progressive Democrats would have to agree to vote for fewer provisions than they wanted, and fewer provisions than the House passed previously. Speaker Pelosi has already released a statement supporting the agreement to help that effort. This package would likely take a week of Senate floor time, reducing the time available for other policy initiatives. While the goal is to complete this prior to the July 4 recess, that is not a hard deadline. Stay tuned on next steps.
The appropriations process for FY 2023 is picking up speed. Late last week, the House adopted a $1.6 trillion discretionary spending cap for FY 2023. There is still no bipartisan, bicameral agreement on overall limits for defense and nondefense spending, however. Following the spending cap agreement, the House Appropriations Committee announced its schedule for all subcommittee and some full committee markups during June.
