More Committee Bills Cleared for President’s Signature

WASHINGTON, DC – The House of Representatives on Wednesday evening approved three more bipartisan bills that will now head to President Obama to be signed into law. H.R. 669, the Sudden Unexpected Death and Data Enhancement Awareness Act, S. 2917, the Adding Ebola to the FDA Priority Review Voucher Program Act, and S. 2673, the U.S.-Israel Strategic Partnership Act were all approved by unanimous consent. 

H.R. 669, introduced by Health Subcommittee Ranking Member Frank Pallone (D-NJ) and Rep. Peter King (R-NY), provides for activities to help improve the understanding of stillbirth, sudden unexpected infant death, and sudden unexplained death in children.

S. 2917, championed by full committee Vice Chairman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) in the House, will strengthen the Food and Drug Administration’s voucher program to include diseases like Ebola. This will help encourage more investment and innovation for the development of treatments for these diseases. Blackburn commented, “With nearly 15,000 cases and over 5,000 deaths, the 2014 Ebola epidemic is the worst since the discovery of the virus in 1976. In light of this global outbreak there should be an intensive effort to find and approve a treatment or better yet, a vaccine to prevent Ebola.”

S. 2673, the U.S.-Israel Strategic Partnership Act, includes language authored by Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI) and Ranking Member Henry A. Waxman (D-CA) to strengthen the collaboration between the United States and Israel on energy development and to bolster the existing United States-Israel energy relationship by encouraging increased cooperation between the two countries.

These bills join H.R. 5728, the STELA Reauthorization Act, and H.R. 4067, an act to provide for the extension of the enforcement instruction on supervision requirements for outpatient therapeutic services in critical access and small rural hospitals through 2014, that are both awaiting the president’s signature.

“Once these pending measures are signed by President Obama, our total will be 40 bipartisan committee bills that have become law in the 113th Congress. We have a proud bipartisan record of results that is positively impacting countless Americans, and our success gives great optimism about what we will be able to accomplish in the new Congress,” commented Upton.

A complete list of the committee’s bipartisan #RecordOfSuccess is available online here. 

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