On September 28, President Trump signed the $854 billion " Department of Defense and Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations Act, 2019 and Continuing Appropriations Act, 2019" ( Public Law 115-245) into law. The Senate passed the bill on Sept. 18 by a vote of 93-7 and the House passed it on Sept. 26 by a vote of 361-61. In addition to providing nearly 70 percent of all federal discretionary spending, the bill also includes a 10-week Continuing Resolution (CR) which will temporarily fund the federal government, at enacted FY 2018 levels, from October 1-December 7, 2018. The CR will apply to all federal departments and agencies under the jurisdiction of the seven FY 2019 appropriations bills that were not enacted prior to the beginning of FY 2019: Interior-Environment; Financial Services; Agriculture-Rural Development; Transportation-HUD; Homeland Security; Commerce-Justice-Science; and State-Foreign Operations. The FY19 funding levels for these remaining bills will be finalized by Congress in the lame-duck period in late November/early December 2018. Summaries of the FY19 Defense-Labor-HHS-Education minibus package are available here and here. Read more. 

On September 26, the House passed, by a vote of 398-23, the $96.7 billion FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018 ( H.R. 302), which reauthorizes the Federal Aviation Administration through 2023 and includes the text of the Disaster Recovery Reform Act of 2018 ( H.R. 4460) which reforms several FEMA programs to help communities better prepare for, respond to, recover from, and mitigate against disasters of all types. The bill also contains provisions related to airport infrastructure, aviation safety, unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), Transportation Security Administration (TSA) reform, and $1.68 billion in Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Relief (CDBG-DR) funding to help with recovery efforts for Hurricane Florence. The House and Senate also passed, by Unanimous Consent, the "Airport and Airway Extension Act of 2018, Part II" ( H.R. 6897 ) which extends an FAA authorization from October 1-7, in order to provide the Senate additional time to pass the long-term FAA bill; Trump signed the one-week FAA extension into law on Sept. 29. The Senate is expected to pass H.R. 302 prior to Oct. 7. A short summary of H.R. 302 is available here, while a more detailed summary is available here. Read more. 

On September 28, the House passed, by a vote of 393-8, the Substance Use-Disorder Prevention that Promotes Opioid Recovery and Treatment (SUPPORT) for Patients and Communities Act ( H.R. 6), which authorizes an array of grant programs to help curb the opioid addiction epidemic. The measure contains provisions from dozens of proposals and would modify Medicare prescription drug coverage, Medicaid coverage for inpatient treatment, Food and Drug Administration import oversight, and authorize a panoply of grant programs to aid local treatment providers and law enforcement. The Senate is expected to pass H.R. 6 during the week of Oct. 1 and send it to President Trump's desk to be signed into law. A detailed summary of H.R. 6 is available here. Read more.