Latest news with #bipartisan
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Polis vetoes bill prohibiting surprise bills for ambulatory services
DENVER (KDVR) — Colorado Gov. Jared Polis vetoed a bill that sought to help protect Coloradans from surprise bills after being transported to a hospital, and help ensure people don't hesitate to call 911 in an emergency. House Bill 25-1088 would have prohibited 'surprise billing' or 'balance billing' and made it so that insurance companies would have to pay rates set by local agencies for ambulatory services. If an ambulance needed to provide a service for someone out of network, the bill would have set a way for them to get reimbursed. Governor vetoes rideshare safety bill: Sponsors call action a 'devastating blow' The bill gained bipartisan support from counties across the state and made it to Polis' desk for signing, but was ultimately vetoed on Thursday. In his veto letter, Polis said he agreed with many of the goals of the bill but said that they were outweighed by other consequences of the bill. 'I have been provided with estimates on premium impact that range from $0.73 to $2.15 per member per month, which means a family of four would likely pay as much as one hundred dollars more per year in insurance premiums if I were to sign this bill; by every estimate, this bill raises costs for consumers,' Polis wrote. Polis addressed other concerns that make the bill 'unimplementable,' including enforcement issues and a misalignment among reimbursements for private and public ambulance service providers. The governor noted that he signed Senate Bill 22-040 created a process for an objective, independent analysis of any legislation that proposes changes to health benefit coverage so that lawmakers could have all of the data they need to consider the benefits and impacts of new proposals. However, Polis said House Bill 25-1088 is not eligible for an actuarial study under that law as it currently is because health plans generally already cover ambulance services to an extent, and the bill modifies the rates paid to providers for those services. On top of vetoing the bill, Polis called on the General Assembly to amend Senate Bill 2-040 to make sure that bills that substantively modify existing benefits or cost-sharing are eligible for actuarial analysis in the future. He said that he encourages the bill sponsors to address the bill's flaws and 'find a better solution, work towards a more reasonable reimbursement rate' to protect Coloradans from surprise bills without raising premiums for all Coloradans. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Crypto Insight
3 days ago
- Business
- Crypto Insight
US lawmakers introduce bipartisan regulatory framework for digital assets
US Representative French Hill has announced the introduction of the much-awaited market structure bill for digital assets. The 'Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025' or 'CLARITY Act of 2025' comes with support from lawmakers across both sides of the aisle, including three Democratic co-sponsors. The bill covers the roles of both the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) on digital assets oversight, seeking to resolve longstanding questions about which agency oversees which types of digital assets. 'I am proud to introduce the bipartisan CLARITY Act with my colleagues,' Hill said in a May 29 statement. 'Our bill brings long-overdue clarity to the digital asset ecosystem, prioritizes consumer protection and American innovation, and builds off our work in the 118th Congress.' Under the CLARITY Act, developers would be required to provide accurate and relevant disclosures detailing a project's operation, ownership, and structure. The bill also introduces new compliance requirements for customer-facing firms such as brokers and dealers, including clear disclosures to customers, segregation of customer assets from company funds, and mitigation of conflicts of interest through strict registration, transparency, and operational standards. In addition, the Act establishes 'comprehensive registration regimes' that would allow digital asset firms to legally serve customers in the US market. 'The CLARITY Act will deliver clear rules of the road that entrepreneurs, investors, and consumers deserve,' Representative Ritchie Torres said in a statement. The bill emerged from the House Committee on Financial Services. The committee had previously worked on the FIT21 Act, which passed out of the House of Representatives but stalled in the Senate. Hearings for a market structure bill started initially in April within the Subcommittee on Digital Assets, Financial Technology, and Artificial Intelligence. Market structure, stablecoin bills points of emphasis for Congress Market structure and stablecoin bills have long been points of emphasis for Congress, which has sought to regulate the burgeoning crypto industry in the United States. Representative Ro Khanna said in March that Congress 'should be able to get' both a stablecoin bill and a market structure bill done this year. The stablecoin bill, known as the GENIUS Act, faces a full Senate vote after it passed a procedural vote earlier in May. The Trump administration has pushed for the passing of the GENIUS Act, with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Crypto Czar David Sacks both advocating for it publicly. The bill initially lost key support in May from Democrats protesting against US President Donald Trump's crypto ties. Source:
Yahoo
3 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Last-minute bill would let Nevada's nonpartisan voters join major party primaries for the first time
A last-minute bill offered by Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager would let non-partisan voters cast ballots in major-party primaries for the first time.
Fox News
4 days ago
- Business
- Fox News
SENS WARREN, SHEEHY: Pentagon wastes billions with devastating repair rules. We're working together to stop it
Our defense industrial base is stumbling. For years, the U.S. Department of Defense – under both Republicans and Democrats – failed to address one of the most fundamental issues within our military industrial complex, perverse incentives for contractors. But with the recently announced Army Transformation Initiative, Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll and General Randy George are taking a major step to stand up for soldiers and strengthen our military readiness. Driscoll's plan will help end one source of waste, fraud, and abuse. Every other military branch should follow their lead – and, if they do, they will have our bipartisan support. The Department of Defense is the largest federal agency, consuming half the discretionary budget the federal government spends every year. In 2023, for example, DoD spent almost $450 billion on contracts. But buried down deep in the fine print, many of those contracts included restrictions that prevent our troops from fixing their own weapons and equipment. That fine print means that every time something breaks, DoD must call the contractor, schedule a repair visit, and pay a hefty fee. For some contracts, the repairs are more profitable than the original sale – a dynamic that represents how years of broken bureaucracy has slowed our acquisition process and driven costs higher and higher. Our military buys a lot of gear – from tanks to helicopters to night vision goggles, and the process to buy that gear is longer and more complicated than ever. Even worse, because our service members often can't make any repairs, they can be stuck waiting weeks or months, even for simple problems they could fix themselves with a little know-how and a 3D printer. Driscoll has identified these problems in the Army, but right to repair restrictions have spread across the military. The Navy was forced to rely on flying contractors out to sea for maintenance. The Air Force is struggling to keep its planes ready for combat because of restrictions and companies that won't even negotiate. Every hour these servicemembers can't fix their own weapons undermines their readiness to meet their assignments. Instead of working to help the military be ready for battle, these contractors are focused on squeezing out more revenue. These restrictions lead to three critical problems: readiness, cost and lack of competition. First, when contractors stop soldiers from fixing their own equipment, it threatens military readiness. All around the country, maintainers were struggling to keep the F-35 flying because Lockheed Martin won't give them the data they need to fix damage to basic parts. When our military could fix a helicopter in Korea themselves, they saved 207 days and roughly $1.8 million. Our military can't afford to wait 207 days to get a helicopter back online. And, in the most extreme cases, our military can't afford to have soldiers unable to repair equipment in the heat of battle, either because the contract has tied their hands or because they haven't had the chance to learn how. Imagine how frustrating it would be to be in the field up against an enemy, suffer an equipment breakdown, and there would be nothing to do about it. We need to end these dangerous right-to-repair restrictions so that our military is always ready. Second, repair restrictions waste billions of dollars. If Boeing got the Pentagon to agree that only Boeing can repair equipment, what stops them from charging whatever they want for that fix? Suddenly a $0.16 clip costs $20, and the defense budget rises even higher. That is a terrible deal for the taxpayer. By some estimates, giving the military the right to repair would save us billions. But more importantly, it would reinvigorate the operational resilience of our forward-deployed elements and allow them to self-sustain. And third, letting a contractor monopolize repairs doesn't just hurt taxpayers, it hurts small businesses that otherwise could compete for the repair work, depressing competition and thinning out our industrial base. Why would a small business start manufacturing a safety clip when the military is forced to go to its larger competitor to buy it? And equally alarmingly, if that big contractor decided one day to stop producing the part, the military would be out of luck because the contractor had the only game in town. To be sure, the military created this monopolistic environment, incentivizing consolidation through decades of bureaucratic process. Now they are reaping the whirlwind. We need a more diverse array of contractors who can bring free market competition to our defense space, driving costs down and efficiencies up. Until now, the military has enabled a broken status quo, handing over billions of dollars and hoping that there is no emergency when the equipment they need is sidelined. Meanwhile, over 70% of voters support giving the military the right to repair their own equipment. But Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll showed real leadership. He stood up to a broken bureaucracy and announced that every new Army contract would explicitly guarantee the right of the Army to fix its own equipment. That's a big deal. Every hour these servicemembers can't fix their own weapons undermines their readiness to meet their assignments. Instead of working to help the military be ready for battle, these contractors are focused on squeezing out more revenue. The new Army policy is a breakthrough in our fight to empower soldiers, but unless every single military service follows his lead, taxpayers will keep getting ripped off. And, because this is a directive from the secretary, a subsequent secretary could go back to the way things were before. But we have a plan to solve that problem. In the coming weeks, we will be introducing a bipartisan bill that would make changes to right to repair permanent. With a single change in the law, we can boost military readiness and cut costs by allowing servicemembers to repair their own equipment. On both sides of the aisle, many of us agree that waste, fraud and abuse are real problems in our government – and it's worse when it threatens our military readiness. It's time to show servicemembers we've got their backs and restore their right to fix their own equipment. Republican Tim Sheehy represents Montana in the United States Senate. He is a father, husband, former Navy SEAL team leader, aerial firefighter and entrepreneur. Sheehy completed several deployments and hundreds of missions as a Navy SEAL officer and team leader, earning the Bronze Star with Valor for Heroism in Combat and the Purple Heart.
Fox News
4 days ago
- Business
- Fox News
Senators go to Canada to meet PM Carney, smooth Trump tariff, 51st-state tensions
A bipartisan group of senators, led by North Dakota Republican Kevin Cramer and New Hampshire Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, recently traveled to Ottawa, Ontario, to help ease rising tensions between the U.S. and Canada. The quintet, which also included Sens. Peter Welch, D-Vt., Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Tim Kaine, D-Va., was photographed glad-handing Prime Minister Mark Carney, a liberal who had been aided in his election over conservative favorite Pierre Poilievre in part due to American right-wing overtures. As the lone Republican, Cramer was in the difficult spot of balancing representing the president's party and engendering goodwill with Carney, whose government has been targeted by U.S. tariffs and pledges by President Donald Trump to be made the "51st state." He did not respond to a Fox News request for comment in that regard, but Kaine told Punchbowl News that Trump respects Cramer and his "insight and loyalty." "That means the president can probably hear some things from him that, if I said it, I wouldn't get paid attention to," Kaine said. In a statement, Cramer said the two nations share "more than a border" and that working through challenges requires "frank dialogue." "I was encouraged by the meetings, and the Prime Minister's transparent and thoughtful words were smart and instructive. I look forward to working with our friends, business partners, and neighbors in Canada to strengthen our relationship and address mutual issues facing our great countries," he added. The delegation, joined by Ambassador Pete Hoekstra, a former border-state congressman from Michigan, was geared toward joint defense and economic priorities, according to Cramer. The White House directed Fox News Digital to the State Department when asked about its response to the diplomatic overture from Cramer and the four Democrats. But Foggy Bottom did not provide comment for the record. But Cramer told Punchbowl he didn't want to get in Trump's way and that no trade deal could happen without the White House but that Canada needs to know they have a partner in the U.S. "Hopefully I navigated it OK, but I'll find out on Truth Social," he said. Kaine plans to force a Senate vote on a resolution to block Trump's China tariffs if détente isn't reached between Ottawa and Washington. His office directed Fox News Digital to a Punchbowl story on the matter, where the Virginian was quoted saying that there will be negative effects on the U.S. economy if "this doesn't get sorted out." "I hope I don't need to," Kaine said. The U.S. imposed 25% tariffs on Canadian steel, automobiles and other goods not currently covered under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, according to the Wall Street Journal. Canada retaliated by imposing $43 billion worth of its own tariffs against the U.S. "We've got more that we need to do before we're satisfied that we have a partnership that is in Canada's interest. We've made a lot of progress," Carney said Tuesday after the visit concluded. Every congressional participant except Kaine hails from a state that borders Canada. One report said that annual Canadian visitation to Cramer's North Dakota outnumbers its own population, while Welch has been vocal about Vermont's symbiotic reliance on Canadian residents' dollars, especially in its recreation sector. "The U.S.-Canada relationship has made us all safer and more prosperous, protecting our continent from foreign threats and transforming North America into a hub of global trade, innovation and investment," Welch said in a statement co-signed by the other lawmakers. "The trip has reaffirmed our joint desire to move past current tensions in the bilateral relationship and lay the groundwork for a stronger partnership moving forward."
