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Presented by Pharmaceutical Reform Alliance
Big Pharma hikes up drug prices every year, most recently on over 800 prescription drugs. But did you know these price hikes are often unjustified? For too long, Big Pharma has profited on the backs of hardworking Americans. Enough is enough.
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THE TOP

Happy Wednesday morning.
The House x 2024: The House Republican majority’s sprawling investigations into President Joe Biden, his family and his policies are, once again, becoming the centerpiece of the 2024 presidential campaign, putting a focus on the GOP’s investigators and bomb throwers.
But, the problem for the GOP is similar to what we saw in 2016. The Benghazi investigation was infamously viewed as overtly partisan. Remember Kevin McCarthy’s ill-fated boast that the probe led to Hillary Clinton’s poll numbers dropping?
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), who chaired the Oversight Committee during that time, said he was “proud” of the work put into that investigation, but warned the importance of House Republicans remaining neutral when conducting their sweeping probes.
“We genuinely need to remain independent,” Issa said.
The California Republican didn’t directly answer if Republican-led investigations would aid former President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign, or if they were asserting themselves too much into the campaign cycle.
But now, congressional Republicans seem poised to launch a new probe into the plea agreement Hunter Biden cut with the DOJ, calling it a “sweetheart deal” that highlights “two tiers of justice” in the United States.
Even so, House Republicans are adamant that their investigations aren’t about Trump.
“We’re doing our work because it’s what we’re supposed to do as part of our constitutional duty,” said House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). “We’re not focused on what it may or may not be doing in any other way. We’re just doing our job.”
House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) said he hadn’t put “any thought into that” when we asked him whether he worried his panel’s investigation of Biden was delving into the 2024 presidential election.
“I’m just trying to follow the money that flowed from foreign nationals to the Bidens. That’s all I’m really thinking about,” Comer told us. Again, Comer hasn’t publicly produced any definitive evidence that money from foreign nationals went to Biden.
House Homeland Security Committee Chair Mark Green (R-Tenn.) defended his panel’s investigations into DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas as necessary for “fixing a failed system.”
“Do you think our border is secure? Do you think 107,000 dead Americans in one year from fentanyl is something we should just say, ‘Oh, we’ll be OK about that?’” Green said.
Now House Republicans are simultaneously trying to squelch Biden’s reelection chances while serving as the primary bulwark against their own leading candidate’s scandals.
Former President Donald Trump faces a myriad of charges in New York and Florida with investigations in Washington and Georgia still ongoing.
House Republicans, for the most part, have chosen to go all in defending Trump, accusing the Biden administration of the very thing they’re doing — politicizing a criminal investigation to benefit a leading 2024 presidential candidate.
And the members leading these investigations face low risk and high reward — they come from safe GOP districts with little worry of losing reelection.
But there’s potentially huge downsides here for the vulnerable Republicans sitting in blue-leaning districts. With such a huge focus on investigating the Bidens and defending Trump, Republicans could turn off the very voters in those districts who gave them a slim, five-seat majority.
“I worry that the public just gets to a saturation point,” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) said. “I mean, at some point they just say, ‘They’re crooked. We know it, let’s go on about it.’”
Rep. John Duarte (R-Calif.) said he hasn’t faced any blowback yet in his purple district related to partisan conduct in Congress from his colleagues.
“There’s a really sincere concern with justice in America today,” Duarte told us. “As long as we’re taking the facts as they come and adding transparency, I think that’s very helpful.”
“I think it’s a fundamental responsibility of Congress to hold the executive branch accountable,” Rep. Marc Molinaro (R-N.Y.), another vulnerable Republican, said. “And frankly, I think far too often we allow executives to get away with some questionable decision-making and it’s our job to provide the appropriate oversight.”
Democrats, meanwhile, directly correlated Republican investigations as being an unofficial defense team for Trump.
“They’re certainly intended to help the Trump campaign, but they’re ridiculous and I think they’re going to backfire,” House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) told us.
Oversight Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said the effort to help Trump dilutes the credibility of the Republicans’ work.
“Congressional investigations and legislation have to be about something more than presidential politics for anyone to take it seriously,” Raskin told us.
We’ll monitor how these investigations will be used across the 2024 campaign cycle.
Floor action this week: The House will vote today on Rep. Anna Paulina Luna’s (R-Fla.) latest resolution to censure Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). Democrats will try to table the resolution, like they successfully did last week. As we reported in yesterday’s AM edition, several Republicans have flipped to support the measure.
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) also filed a resolution to impeach Biden Tuesday and seems intent on forcing a vote before the end of the week. This is expected to be a major point of conversation in the closed House GOP conference meeting this morning. House Republican leadership hopes to talk Boebert out of forcing a vote this week. They believe Democrats will have enough GOP support to table the resolution — if Boebert forces the issue.
Not to be outdone, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) is also threatening to force impeachment votes against various Biden administration officials.
— Jake Sherman, Mica Soellner, Max Cohen and Heather Caygle
PRESENTED BY THE ALZHEIMER’S ASSOCIATION
Why Is Medicare Access Only Restricted for Alzheimer’s?
Breakthroughs in Alzheimer’s research have led to new FDA-approved treatments. But, for the first time ever, CMS blocked Medicare coverage to these treatments costing patients with a terminal disease time they will never get back. Now CMS insists on imposing unprecedented, unclear and unnecessary restrictions for coverage that are not required for any other FDA-approved drug. Medicare must be fair to those with Alzheimer’s.

Viewers’ guide: Markup in the Senate and Powell in the House
It’s going to be another jam-packed day for financial policy on Capitol Hill. Here’s what you need to know.
The Senate Banking Committee will markup legislation today for the first time since 2019. There are two bills on the docket — the RECOUP Act and the FEND Off Fentanyl Act.
We expect the conversation around the RECOUP Act to be lively. This collaboration from Senate Banking Committee Chair Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) would give bank regulators stronger authority to claw back incentive-based pay, ban execs from the industry after misconduct and direct bank boards to develop new corporate governance standards.
But a competitor bill with bipartisan support will hang over the proceeding. The Failed Bank Executives Clawback Act, introduced by Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) with updates from Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), proposes sharper penalties covering a longer period of pay than the Brown-Scott package.
The RECOUP Act has strong institutional support with the backing of Brown and Scott. But there’s also bipartisan interest from lawmakers on the panel in the Warren-Hawley package. Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) told us Tuesday night that “what Senator Warren is proposing makes a great deal of sense.”
So there will be more than a few amendments in the mix, and it’s possible some could be included in the package that ultimately clears the committee. “We’ll be an active participant, whatever happens,” Vance told us.
But wait! There’s more! After the markup concludes, the banking panel will then host the latest trio of Federal Reserve nominees. Board member Philip Jefferson was nominated to be the Fed’s next vice chair; Fed board member Lisa Cook was nominated to a full 12-year term and Adriana Kugler was nominated to be the Fed’s newest governor.
At this point, these noms have a relatively clear path through the Senate. We caught up with Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), who told us he’d already had “good meetings” with all three and could be convinced to vote for any of them — including Cook, despite voting against her as recently as May 2022.
Meanwhile in the House: We’ll hear from Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell, who will appear before the House Financial Services Committee for regularly scheduled testimony.
Powell is coming to the Hill just after the Fed opted not to raise interest rates last week — the first not-a-hike since March 2022. So expect plenty of questions about that.
“Of course, as usual, everything will be on monetary policy, and it will all be very fairly predictable based on which side of the political spectrum you’re on,” Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) told us.
But we’re also sure to hear some regulatory concerns from lawmakers, as well. Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) said he might ask about funding of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which currently runs through the Fed. Rep. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) said he’ll focus on how the Fed’s regulations overlap with those from the Securities and Exchange Commission.
But all things being equal, Powell remains a fairly popular man on the Hill, and the U.S. economy just keeps chugging along. We expect a smoother experience for the Fed chair than his colleagues vying for Senate confirmation on the other side of the Hill.
— Brendan Pedersen
THE SENATE
Senate Armed Services plows ahead on abortion vote despite GOP misgivings
The Senate Armed Services Committee is kicking off its most crucial stretch of the year this week as senators begin marking up the annual defense policy bill, a bipartisan priority.
But simmering behind the scenes is an increasingly ugly feud between Democrats and Republicans on the staid committee over Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s (R-Ala.) ongoing blockade of senior military promotions.
The committee is set to vote later today on Sen. Joni Ernst’s (R-Iowa) bill revoking the Pentagon’s abortion policy, which is what’s driving Tuberville’s actions. The Alabamian has said a vote on Ernst’s bill won’t get him to back down, but Democrats are moving forward with it anyway. This is an effort by Democrats to portray Tuberville as intransigent.
As a result, even the Republicans who were criticizing Tuberville for using military promotions as leverage are slamming the committee vote, which is likely to fail and is being considered apart from the National Defense Authorization Act markup. (Democrats have a one-seat majority on the committee.)
Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the top Republican on the panel, told us that Democrats were simply trying “to keep the Ernst amendment out of the main [defense] bill.”
“I don’t like it, let me just be very clear about that,” Ernst added. “I’m not sure what their goal is in trying to do this. I’m just not going to be deterred… Whether it’s a standalone bill, whether it’s an amendment, I’ll keep offering it.”
Armed Services Committee Chair Jack Reed (D-R.I.), who has been working feverishly behind the scenes to find a path to end Tuberville’s blockade, told us it’s “appropriate” for the committee to vote on it and praised Ernst for being “extremely professional” about it.
The futile nature of the effort — and the fact that Democrats are proceeding with it despite Tuberville’s insistence that it won’t impact his holds — is a reflection of the unprecedented nature of the Alabamian’s tactics. Tuberville maintains that he won’t back down unless the Pentagon revokes the abortion policy — which he says amounts to taxpayer funding of abortions — or the Senate passes legislation codifying it.
Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) has been calling attention to Tuberville’s holds for months. He went to the Senate floor late Tuesday night to raise awareness of the issue, saying Americans “would be shocked” if they knew what Tuberville was doing and “should be asking their senators where they stand on this.”
“No one in the history of this body has ever done this,” Bennet said. “Not only has nobody done it, but nobody has done it and taken a political position that’s so far outside the mainstream.”
For a short period of time, it appeared as if Tuberville could buckle to pressure from his fellow Republicans who were openly slamming his decision to deny unanimous consent for military promotions in protest of the Pentagon’s abortion policy. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was among those who have said they disagreed with Tuberville’s actions.
Now, the narrative has shifted and the Armed Services Committee is mired in a partisan foodfight with no clear path to resolving the impasse. More than 250 general and flag officers are awaiting formal Senate approval of their promotions.
— Andrew Desiderio
PRESENTED BY THE ALZHEIMER’S ASSOCIATION

CMS is planning burdensome restrictions of Alzheimer’s treatments, only providing coverage through an unexplained registry — something Medicare has never before done for an FDA-approved drug.
WASHINGTON X THE FUTURE
Schumer: AI is ‘unlike anything Congress has dealt with’
It’s no secret that Congress isn’t great at solving problems it doesn’t understand.
So lawmakers are taking a new approach when it comes to artificial intelligence.
Later today, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is expected to lay out a path for Congress to comprehensively address AI — something senators openly admit they know very little about.
Here’s part of what Schumer will say when he addresses the issue at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS):
“It’s not like labor or health care or defense where Congress has a long history we can work off of. Experts are not even sure which questions policymakers should be asking. In many ways, we’re starting from scratch.”
Schumer will point to the Senate’s legislative achievements of the past two years to make the argument that Congress is “up to the challenge” — and that ignoring AI is an untenable position.
A word of caution: Don’t mistake this speech for a policy proposal. We’re told it’s simply a framework for how Congress can eventually get there — and speed up the usually slow-moving legislative process. There’s no timeline for getting this done.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy has also shown interest in bringing the House up to speed on AI. He hosted closed bipartisan briefings for lawmakers.
Schumer and a bipartisan gang — Sens. Todd Young (R-Ind.), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) and Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) — have already launched an initiative aimed at educating senators about AI. The chief message is that AI’s capabilities are advancing rapidly and Congress doesn’t have the luxury of resorting to its usual procedures to regulate it.
“We have to continue to allow AI to flourish here in the United States, while at the same time looking at areas in which to provide transparency and personal protections in terms of personal information,” Rounds told us. “How we do that is going to be the challenge.”
Most of this won’t be rooted in ideological differences between the two parties, as is often the case on Capitol Hill. There’s a recognition that AI carries many benefits, but also that it has the potential to inflict harm by spreading misinformation and altering the workforce.
And Schumer will pose a fascinating question during his speech tomorrow — one that gets at the heart of Congress’ fundamental duties:
“How much federal intervention, on the tax and spending side, must there be? Is federal intervention to encourage innovation necessary at all, or should we let the private sector develop on its own?”
We’ll have much more on this in the Midday edition.
— Andrew Desiderio
PRESENTED BY THE ALZHEIMER’S ASSOCIATION

Why is Medicare access only restricted for Alzheimer’s drugs?
MOMENTS
All times eastern
9:30 a.m.: Sens. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Chuck Schumer and women senators will hold a news conference on the anniversary of the Dobbs decision.
10 a.m.: House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, House Majority Whip Tom Emmer and House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik will hold a news conference after their closed party meeting.
10:15 a.m.: House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar and Vice Chair Ted Lieu will hold a news conference after their party meeting.
Noon: President Joe Biden will get his daily intelligence briefing.
1:05 p.m.: Biden will leave San Francisco for Joint Base Andrews. He’ll arrive at 5:50 p.m.
2 p.m.: Senate leadership will gaggle after their weekly party meeting.
4 p.m.: Speaker Kevin McCarthy and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries will host a ceremony to unveil a stamp honoring the late Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.).
6:50 p.m.: The Bidens will welcome Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the White House.
7:15 p.m.: Biden will have dinner with Modi.
CLIP FILE
ProPublica
→ | “Justice Samuel Alito Took Luxury Fishing Vacation With GOP Billionaire Who Later Had Cases Before the Court,” by Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan and Alex Mierjeski |
NYT
→ | “Why Is Narendra Modi So Popular? Tune In to Find Out,” by Mujib Mashal in New Delhi |
Bloomberg
→ | “China Says Biden Calling Xi Jinping a Dictator Is ‘Provocation’” |
WSJ
→ | “U.S. Tracked Huawei, ZTE Workers at Suspected Chinese Spy Sites in Cuba,” by Kate O’Keeffe |
AP
→ | “Modi to start US visit with yoga on the UN lawn, a savvy and symbolic choice for India’s leader,” by Jennifer Peltz at the United Nations |
Politico
→ | “‘Terrible idea’: Fellow Dems try to stop Manchin’s presidential flirtation,” by Burgess Everett |
Editorial photos provided by Getty Images. Political ads courtesy of AdImpact.
PRESENTED BY THE ALZHEIMER’S ASSOCIATION
Are Continued Restrictions for FDA-approved Alzheimer’s Treatments the Future of Medicare?
For people living with Alzheimer’s, Medicare hasn’t been the “rock solid guarantee” President Biden has promised. For more than a year, CMS has blocked Medicare coverage to FDA-approved Alzheimer’s treatments costing patients with a terminal disease time they will never get back. Now the agency is planning to continue unprecedented restrictions, saying they’ll provide coverage only through a registry — something Medicare has never before done for an FDA-approved drug. Yet with a deadline only weeks away, CMS has yet to explain the barriers patients will face or the steps doctors must take to prepare to deliver long-delayed treatment. Each day is crucial to someone living with early stage Alzheimer’s when it comes to slowing the progression of this disease. Medicare must do better for beneficiaries with Alzheimer’s.

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