September 27, 2023

Shutdown Watch:

Congress is now three days shy of a federal government shutdown, and despite the Senate’s introduction of a bipartisan continuing resolution and the House’s movement on four appropriations bills, the two chambers have made little progress in hammering out a joint compromise.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s victory is modest in the grand scheme of things this week. She notes that none of the four measures — which would fund USDA, DHS, DOD and the State Department — are guaranteed to pass, and the speaker’s gamble in hoping that forward momentum on a third of the annual funding bills would sway senators or his own chamber’s holdouts remains a big one.

Meanwhile, the bipartisan Senate CR is hardly a sure thing to pass even its own chamber, let alone the House. Although its cloture vote passed last night without issue, the proposed stopgap’s inclusion of additional Ukraine and federal disaster aid have remained hard lines that House GOP has shown no inclination to cross. One of the lower chamber’s lead appropriators, Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), told our Burgess Everett, Sarah Ferris, Caitlin Emma and Ursula Perano, in no uncertain terms, that the CR “ain’t gonna pass the House.”

While it seems unlikely there will be enough serious concessions madeto keep the federal government up and running past this Saturday, our Congress team noted that McCarthy indicated a willingness and desire to meet with President Joe Biden on potentially convincing Democrats to acquiesce on some border policy matters, which the speaker said “could keep the government open.”

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Gov. Hochul on potential federal shutdown, migrant work permits and SFY 2025 budget:

Gov. Hochul didn’t mince words calling out Republicans in Washington, D.C., as they hold up a stopgap spending agreement to avert a national shutdown that might further delay working permits for Venezuelan migrants, State of Politics reports.
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* State legislators must support the Safer Consumption Services Act to ensure that upstate communities have all options on the table to deal with the opioid epidemic, including overdose prevention centers, writes state Sen. Jeremy Cooney.

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Politico – 9/27 –– The nation is facing an opioid overdose crisis. But a Staten Island program designed to combat the crisis is showing early indicators of hope, and it leverages machine learning to do it.

In 2021, there were 2,668 overdose deaths in New York City, a 78 percent increase from 2019. Eighty-four percent of overdose deaths in 2021 involved an opioid.

The new Staten Island Hotspotting Program, developed through a partnership with Northwell Health’s Staten Island Performing Provider System and MIT’s Sloan School of Management, is using a novel data analytics model to identify individuals most at-risk of overdosing and sending out help before it’s too late.

The model, based on 107 “predictor variables” and a roster of 1,414 individuals, sent out certified recovery peer advocates and a trained clinician to individuals picked out by the model. They then provided support focused on meeting the individual “where they are” in their addiction.

The program found that individuals enrolled in the study’s “engaged group” saw only two overdose-related deaths, compared to 11 deaths in the non-engaged group. There was also an 81 percent drop in non-fatal overdoses for those engaged in the program.

“The opioid overdose epidemic is one of our nation’s greatest public health crises,” former Staten Island congressman Max Rose said.

“The incredible work done in two years by the Hotspotting Program is a testament to the fact that this does not have to be the case. It is now imperative that managed care organizations and governments nationwide step up to scale this proven model,” he said.

The program also found drops in substance-related ER and in-patient visits for individuals in the engaged group, with a 56.2 percent and 42.6 percent reduction visits, respectively.

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The following item is from the National Council for Emotional Wellbeing:

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Recovery Research Institute Launches National Center on Youth Prevention, Treatment and Recovery 

The Recovery Research Institute’s new National Center on Youth Prevention, Treatment and Recovery advances research in the much-needed area of youth SUD treatment and recovery.  Here’s a link to the Institute’s new Center online: