
Horse trading session has arrived at N.H. State House
Both the New Hampshire House of Representatives and Senate worked late into the night Thursday as they tried desperately to revive bills that the other branch didn't want.
The political game of chicken is expected to continue this week when the two bodies return to session to create committees of conference that will be charged with trying to work out differences between competing versions of a bill.
This stage in the budget process signals that the 2025 session, barring a negotiating meltdown, will conclude in the coming weeks.
Once named, the conference committees will have until June 19 to come up with an agreement that the Legislature must act upon by June 26.
Both bodies must vote to create these panels with three state senators and four House members.
Any agreement requires all conferees to sign onto the proposal; it then returns to the House and Senate for an up-or-down vote, meaning lawmakers at that final meeting are unable to amend it in any fashion.
The two-year state budget is the biggest and most consequential of the disputes, with the Senate last week approving its measure that spent nearly $250 million more than the House-approved version.
All of this one-upmanship resulted in some strange bedfellows, like when the Senate voted to add to a bill increasing the penalty for wrong-way driving (HB 776) and a Senate-passed bill to declare the Virginia opossum the state marsupial (SB 30).
Sen. Donovan Fenton, D-Keene, thanked his colleagues for this act taken because the House put his own bill at risk when, earlier this month, it had tacked onto it new penalties for improper application of fertilizer.
Senate Democratic Leader Rebecca Perkins Kwoka of Portsmouth couldn't resist a punning quip.
'I'm glad the senator from Dist. 10 (Fenton) has not played dead on his bill,' she joked.
The House responded last week, adding to a bill raising the personal allowance that residents of nursing homes are allowed to keep (SB 118) the House-passed bill that would allow medically eligible patients to grow their own marijuana rather than have to buy it at alternative treatment centers at market costs.
House keeps pushing cannabis agenda
Rep. Gary Daniels, R-Milford, tried to convince his colleagues to drop this last-ditch effort.
'The Senate has rejected every single cannabis bill the House has sent it. Do we really want to put a good bill at risk by insisting this be included?' Daniels asked rhetorically.
Rep. Wendy Thomas, D-Merrimack, a cancer survivor, said as an eligible patient she takes marijuana every day and that the underlying personal allowance issue is already contained in versions of the state budget.
The House voted 215-103 to keep the marijuana bill as part of the House position.
Not all of these gambits succeeded.
Rep. Judy Aron, R-Acworth and chairman of the House Environment and Agriculture Committee, had wanted to add to legislation that designated Coos County as an economically distressed area to (SB 180), an unrelated bill from her committee to enhance state rules regarding the approval of future landfills that the Senate had rejected (HB 707).
The House voted 166-163 against that idea, choosing to keep the Coos County economic bill clean.
In one of its last moves, the Senate voted to add onto a temporary youth operator driver's license bill (HB 612) its legislation to declare the third week in September each year "New Hampshire Service Dog Week."
Moments earlier, the House had voted, 179-144, to kill that service dog bill (SB 198).
"We don't need a special holiday in order to say, 'Good dog,'" said Rep. Erica Layon, R-Derry.
Here are some other issues that are likely to need more negotiation before they are settled:
• Mandatory Minimums (SB 14): This Gov. Kelly Ayotte-priority bill that cleared the Senate set stiff mandatory prison terms for offenders selling large amounts of fentanyl and for anyone convicted of selling drugs that causes someone else's death.
The House changed it to give a judge broad latitude to approve a lesser punishment if the offender meets certain criteria. The House also added to this bill a measure the Senate rejected to decriminalize possession of up to three-quarters of an ounce of psilocybin, otherwise known as magic mushrooms.
This change would bring the mushrooms in line with how state law decriminalizes marijuana possession.
https://gc.nh.gov/bill_status/legacy/bs2016/billText.aspx?sy=2025&id=235&txtFormat=html
• Risk Pools (SB 297): Secretary of State David Scanlan convinced the Senate to adopt a bill that gave his office greater power over groups that manage insurance coverage for units of government. The House instead rejected Scanlan's approach in favor of letting these risk pools decide if they would rather come under the regulation of the Insurance Department.
• Tenancy Law Changes (HB 60): The House approved this bill that would permit landlords to give notice to any tenant 60 days notice that they would not be extending their lease and require tenants be evicted if they resisted this move. The Senate adopted this proposal but it would only kick in once the state had a 4% vacancy rate; currently this tight housing market has less than one-half of 1% vacancy in it.
klandrigan@unionleader.com
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CBS News
9 minutes ago
- CBS News
Planned PBS, NPR cuts would overwhelmingly hit outlets in states Trump won, report finds
The looming federal funding cuts to public television and radio would overwhelmingly gut outlets in states won by President Trump in 2024, according to a new congressional report. Approximately 60% of the hundreds of radio and television stations that could suffer funding cuts are in Trump-won states, according to a congressional report obtained by CBS News from Senate Democrats. The organizations that would be affected include public media outlets in cities as large as Houston and Miami, as well as smaller stations in tiny communities like Douglas, Wyoming, which has a population of 6,000 and hosts the Wyoming State Fair. The widespread cuts to public radio and television are a component of a Republican congressional plan to eliminate $9 billion in funding for programs approved before President Trump's second term began. The proposed rescissions package, which is scheduled for a House vote Thursday, includes $1.1 billion in cuts for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides funding to NPR and PBS. The cuts to public broadcasting are being touted by the Trump administration and Republicans as an effort to slash taxpayer funding for news media outlets they accuse of being "liberal" or politically biased in their content. Advocates for public broadcasting have lambasted the cuts as destructive, needless and harmful to communities that have very limited sources of local broadcast news. They also deny allegations of political bias. The list of hundreds of TV and radio outlets facing funding cuts shows a broad range of impact. Major public television and radio stations in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Washington, D.C., could each lose nearly $1 million in grants in the coming months. An FM community public radio station in Carbondale, Colorado, which touts itself as "Public access radio that connects community members to one another and the world," received $145,000 in federal grant funding last year. At each of the public media outlets, the list shows reductions that are sizable enough to potentially require staffing cuts, programming reductions or news cutbacks that threaten to exacerbate shortages of local news content. CBS News' review of proposed grant cuts shows Alabama, a state with an estimated 215 public media employees, would lose as much as $3 million in funding for its public television outlets in the coming months. In South Dakota, a sparsely populated state that nonetheless receives $3 million in funds for public broadcasting employees, the funding cuts would gut money for at least 20 media outlets, according to the report provided by congressional aides to CBS News. "The path to better public media is achievable only if funding is maintained. Otherwise, a vital lifeline that operates reliable emergency communications, supports early learning, and keeps local communities connected and informed will be cut off with regrettable and lasting consequences," said Patricia Harrison, president and CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. "Federal funding for the public broadcasting system is irreplaceable," Harrison said. "Public media serves all — families and individuals, in rural and urban communities — free of charge and commercial free." Both PBS and NPR have sued the Trump administration over previous executive orders cutting their funding, with lawyers for both alleging that among other issues, the cuts violate the First Amendment. PBS CEO Paula Kerger previously said on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" that while PBS only receives 15% of its funding from the federal government, some of its smaller stations receive up to 50% of their funding from federal sources and said the risks to the smaller stations are "existential" if the funding is cut. NPR CEO Katherine Maher has said roughly 1% of the organization's budget comes directly from federal dollars. Some of the many impacted public radio and TV stations have posted messages protesting the proposed cuts in funding. The social media account of a Baltimore public radio station leader said, "This isn't hypothetical—it's real, it's happening, and it places the future of local, trusted public media at serious risk. Let me be clear: this is not a symbolic move. If approved, this action could irreparably damage the local public media." 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"House Republicans will fulfill our mandate and continue codifying into law a more efficient federal government," Johnson said in a statement. "This is exactly what the American people deserve." In April, the White House released a statement saying taxpayers had funded NPR and PBS "for too long" and said they've "spread radical, woke propaganda disguised as 'news.'" The White House Office of Management and Budget did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Yahoo
13 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Liz Warren Says Crypto Bill Creates a ‘Superhighway' for Trump Corruption
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It sounds like a step in the right direction, but this piece of legislation is working its way through Congress as sitting President Donald Trump and his family build a cryptocurrency empire that steamrolls anti-corruption laws and ethical norms — one they hope will flourish under the industry-friendly policies and laws created by the administration of the Trump patriarch. One of Trump's priorities has been the normalization of these so-called stablecoins — a type of asset that his family is now hawking. Despite the moniker, stablecoins can be extremely unstable. A 2023 study published by the Bank for International Settlements found that of 60 stablecoins analyzed in their review, all of them had become de-pegged from their underlying asset at least once. The 2022 crypto crash was triggered by the failure of Terraform Lab's Terra/Luna 'algorithmic' stablecoin — the collapse of which saw $45 billion erased in the span of a week. 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Yahoo
13 minutes ago
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Opinion - Trump's Medicaid and SNAP red tape will devastate millions of Americans
Extending President Trump's 2017 tax cuts is a centerpiece of what the president calls his 'big, beautiful' spending bill that was passed late last month by House Republicans by a single vote. Now it is the Senate's turn to weigh in, but that chamber's narrow Republican majority needs to take a hard look at the facts before pressing the yay button. Trump's legislation may truly be enormous, but it is far from pretty — it stigmatizes the wrong people, slashes the wrong programs and will hurt far more Americans than it helps. For starters, those tax cuts will disproportionately go to the wealthy while adding trillions to the deficit. Meanwhile, the punitive work requirements and layers of paperwork for Medicaid and SNAP (formerly food stamps) recipients are still visible beneath the flimsy camouflage of reducing welfare fraud. Academic research, including my own, shows that the vast majority of Americans who are working, are disabled or are providing caregiving already meet these requirements for state and federal aid. Even the independent Congressional Budget Office reports that work requirements for Medicaid and SNAP do not accomplish their stated goal of increasing employment. Millions of Americans rely on Medicaid and SNAP, essential programs that have lasting benefits beyond health care and healthy eating. In 2023, nearly 83 million children and adults — 24 percent of Americans — relied on Medicaid. Medicaid supports care from the cradle to the grave: Medicaid pays for more than 4 in 10 births in the U.S., and is the largest funder of long-term care, supporting the long-term services and supports needed by almost 6 million Americans in 2021. In 2023, SNAP provided food assistance to an average of 42 million Americans each month. SNAP is important across the age spectrum, too: Nearly half of all children in the U.S. participate in SNAP before their 20th birthday, and more than 4 million seniors 60 or older receive SNAP. The CBO estimates that if the Senate passes the bill in its current form, nearly 15 million Americans will lose their health coverage by 2034 because of Medicaid work requirements and other cuts. The reconciliation bill includes the largest SNAP cut in history. It will eliminate food benefits for more than 3 million adults (about 1 million adults over 55) and roughly 1 million children each month. Still, that doesn't keep Republicans from continually trying to portray recipients as lazy cheaters who need to lace up their boots and get back to the factory. They've been making the same mistake for years. Arkansas in 2018 and Georgia in 2023 implemented Medicaid work requirements. Those moves merely caused thousands to lose insurance coverage, had no effect on employment and did not protect these states from fraud. In Arkansas, they were halted after one year. The punitive requirements in the House Republicans' bill will not only fail to force millions of people into low-paying jobs, but they will also increase Americans' medical debt, creating a further, unnecessary strain on our economy and health care system. If Republicans really think that work requirements and paperwork reduce fraud, they are wrong. Medicaid fraud, for example, is relatively rare and more often committed by health care providers, not beneficiaries. Further, these work requirements will bury Americans in mounds of paperwork and cost millions to administer. Instead, they should try to limit the sophisticated tax evasion strategies used by the top 1 percent, which are rarely detected but very expensive for the country. If Trump's complaisant members of Congress really wanted to increase employment, expansions in public preschool and child care would be much more effective and economical. It's somewhat ironic that an administration that supposedly is taking a chainsaw to the federal bureaucracy is moving to wrap ordinary Americans in red tape. But the reality is the Trump administration seeks to break down barriers for millionaires, while building them up around the rest of us. Taryn Morrissey is a professor and chair of American University's Department of Public Administration and Policy, and associate dean of research at the School of Public Affairs. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.