Shark attacks? Congress has a plan for that.

Also, some more important issues too.

It’ll make sense if you scroll.

Hey all! Happy Friday. For those of you who are new around here, Friday is when I get to share my favorite part of Wake Up To Politics: filling you in on bipartisan pieces of legislation advancing through Congress.

The close readers among you will note that Congress is currently on recess¹ — but bills (in the House, not the Senate) can still be introduced, so I do have some new measures to report on, even if there aren’t any committee or floor votes to share.

I still think introduced legislation can be important to highlight, though — because it shows how many innovative solutions to important policy problems are being proposed by lawmakers, often across party lines. In today’s newsletter, we’ll talk about bills covering everything from Social Security overpayments to shark attacks, and plenty of other issues impacting Americans in their own ways.

Most of these bills, unfortunately, will never see the light of day; they will remain mired in committee forever, like all but the few pieces of legislation granted floor time. As I’ve written previously, there are small-scale (and non-partisan) reforms that would allow some of these common-sense, widely supported bills to more easily advance.

In my opinion, the best case for these reforms is showing the types of bills they would help — not necessarily the big, divisive packages, but the thoughtful, bipartisan bills that would make life better for some segment of the country…if only Congress’ rules allowed for it.

A Pew poll from 2023 found that 84% of Americans think members of Congress do a “bad job at working with members of the opposing party.” But the reality is a little more nuanced: members of the two parties work together all the time! It’s just that the fruits of their efforts rarely make it to the floor — and, when they do, they often receive barely any media coverage. These Friday issues are my attempt to change that.

Note: This week’s issue is going to recap bills introduced during the entire August recess, not just the past week as usual.

Another note: Wake Up To Politics is going to go on a recess of its own next week. Monday is Labor Day, and then later in the week I’ll be traveling, for a family event and for my first time home since graduation. I want to catch my breath for a bit (and use the time to work on a few special projects I’m cooking up); Congress will still be on recess, so the news cycle shouldn’t be too crazy (famous last words). If there’s any urgent news, you’ll hear from me — but otherwise I’ll be back in your inbox on Monday, September 9.

OK, let’s catch up on what your representatives here in Washington are working on:

Social Security probably shouldn’t be putting people into debt

The whole point of Social Security is to help retirees, disabled people, and other low-income individuals stay afloat. So it probably shouldn’t be sending beneficiaries into debt, right?

You would think. Until you hear about Social Security’s “overpayment crisis.” KFF Health News and Cox Media Group have done great reporting on this issue, highlighting stories like Justina Worrell’s. Worrell is an Ohio woman with cerebral palsy who earns $862 a month working in the kitchen at a nursing home and receives $1,065 in monthly Social Security disability benefits. That is, until the agency sent her a letter saying they had been overpaying her for years — and demanding that she send them back $60,175.90, an expense she could not afford. If she didn’t comply within 30 days, she was told, her monthly benefits would stop coming in the mail.

Worrell’s story is far from an isolated incident: KFF and Cox revealed in 2023 that over two million Americans receive these overpayment notices each year (more than double how many the agency acknowledges). That amounts to $23 billion that the agency is currently trying to claw back.

On the one hand, of course, the agency is going after money that should be theirs. But the overpayments were Social Security’s fault. And there are cases of them waiting decades before asking for the money back — meaning they are often demanding six-figure sums that the affected individuals have already spent over the course of years, and now have no way to pay back. One woman in Florida was told she owed $121,000 (again, within 30 days) because of an error the agency had been making for 20 years; she had to sell her house and her car to make the payment.

After congressional pressure, Social Security made some changes in May, announcing that the agency would only withhold 10% of someone’s monthly benefits if they don’t respond to an overpayment notice, instead of the previous 100%.

But other than updating the byzantine process for affected indviduals to receive waivers, they didn’t change the underlying system of trying to claw back the money. Enter the Protecting Americans from Social Security Clawbacks Act, introduced by Reps. Mike Carey (R-OH) and Emilia Sykes (D-OH) last week.

Under the bill, Social Security would only be able to ask for overpayments dating back three years, which would at least limit the balances being demanded back and put an end to the enormous, impossible-to-pay price-tags on some of the notices, built up over decades. (Like the agency’s changes in May, the bill only applies in cases where the overpayments were Social Security’s fault, not when the overpayments were due to fraud.)

“What we’re saying is, listen, if you couldn’t get your act together and notify these people within a three-year window, then you’re going to have to waive that,” Carey said in an interview. “These are people that have been playing by the rules. They’ve been doing everything that they thought they were supposed to do.”²

Feeding kids during the summer

Every year, around 20 million qualifying students receive free or reduced-price school lunches through the National School Lunch Program, a legacy of Harry Truman’s “Fair Deal” (and the brainchild of arch-segregationist Richard Russell). It is the nation’s second-largest food assistance program, behind only SNAP (better known as food stamps).

But then, of course, school ends for the summer. There are federal programs that aim to provide meals to low-income children during the summer as well, but they are much smaller in scope — reaching only 2.8 million children, about 14% of those who rely on free or reduced-price lunches for nutrition during the school year. Many of the rest go hungry.

Reps. Rick Larsen (D-WA), Mary Peltola (D-AK), and Chris Smith (R-NJ) crossed party lines last week to introduce the Summer Meals Act, a measure aimed at closing that gap.

Currently, schools and other local organizations (YMCAs, Boys and Girls Clubs, etc) can receive federal funding for summer lunch programs if 50% of the children in their community are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches. This bipartisan bill would lower that threshold to 40%, opening eligibility up to a lot more communities — including more rural areas, where impoverished families are often more spread out.

The Food Research and Action Center has put together maps for each state, showing what that change in the threshold would mean. For example, in my home state of Missouri, here’s what the change would look like. (Green areas are those already eligible under the 50% threshold. Blue areas are between 40%-49.99%, meaning they would gain eligibility under the bill.)

Food Research and Action Center

You can find the map for your own state here.

The Larsen/Peltola/Smith bill would also allow summer meal sites to serve three meals a day (instead of the two meals currently allowed), provide funding for mobile meal trucks to reach more low-income children in rural areas, and make it easier for programs that already feed children at after-school programs to offer summer lunches. (Currently, those programs have to fill out duplicative paperwork and wade through confusing bureaucratic rules to feed the same children at different points of the year.)

Adults get lonely too

Oftentimes, when we talk about loneliness, we focus on young people, for whom rates of mental health issues have skyrocketed in recent years.

But they aren’t the only ones struggling. A University of Michigan poll last year found that 34% of U.S. adults aged 50 to 80 reported feeling isolated from others — a decrease from the pandemic (obviously), but a notable uptick from pre-Covid levels. A third of adults in the poll reported infrequent contact with people outside of their homes; 37% said they have felt a lack of companionship in the last year.

University of Michigan

The Surgeon General has formally declared the loneliness epidemic to be a public health crisis — and, yes, there are real health risks attached. According to the CDC, social isolation is associated with a 50% increased risk of dementia, a 29% increased risk of heart disease, and a 32% increased risk of stroke.

Hence the Social Engagement and Network Initiatives for Older Relief (SENIOR) Act, which Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) introduced last week along with eight cosponsors (five Democrats and three Republicans). The legislation is a companion measure to a Senate bill introduced in May by Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Rick Scott (R-FL), and Tina Smith (D-MN). “People say we can’t combat loneliness through legislation, but I think that’s a ridiculous thing to say,” Smith declared at the time.

The bill would amend the landmark Older Americans Act (OAA) of 1965 by adding “loneliness” to the list of health issues the law aims to address, right up there with glaucoma, cancer, Alzheimer’s, and a range of others.

Basically, that would unlock funding for states to provide grants under the OAA to programs tackling loneliness among older adults, such as AmeriCorps’ Foster Grandparent program, which matches senior citizens with children they can mentor.

The bill also orders the Health and Human Services Department to prepare a report that will examine the “physical and mental health effects associated with loneliness” and include recommendations for new programs that could address the problem.

Shark week is the new infrastructure week

OK, let’s do the shark one. Among other responsibilities, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is the agency charged with overseeing Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA), the system that lets the government send AMBER Alerts to your phone.

Under a law passed after Hurricane Katrina, FEMA can exercise this authority for three types of situations: National Alerts (this is the presidential-level alert that you might remember being tested in 2018), AMBER Alerts (for lost or abducted children), and Imminent Threat Alerts (which include hurricanes, tornadoes, and other emergency events).

Lulu’s Law was introduced by the entire Alabama congressional delegation (six Republicans and one Democrat) this month, led by Rep. Gary Palmer (R-AL). A companion bill was introduced in the Senate in July.

The bill is named for Lulu Gribbin, a 15-year-old from Mountain Brook, Alabama, who suffered serious injuries after a shark attack in June. Under the measure, shark attacks would be codified as an event that Wireless Emergency Alerts can be sent out for, in order to notify the public if an attack has happened in their area.

In Gribbin’s case, such an alert could have been life-saving: just 90 minutes before her near-fatal accident, another woman was also attacked by a shark a few miles away. Without an alert system, Gribbin had no way of knowing the danger when she entered the water. “As a member of Congress, our top priority should be keeping Americans safe,” Rep. Gary Palmer (R-AL) said in a statement. “Had an alert gone out, the dreadful shark attack on Lulu could have been prevented… By passing Lulu’s Law, we are creating a commonsense solution to prevent future attacks from occurring and keep beachgoers out of harm’s way.”

A point of personal privilege

Fun fact: There was about a year or so when I was allergic to red meat. That’s right, I was one of the estimated 450,000 Americans who has fallen victim to the evils of Alpha-gal Syndrome (AGS), a tick-borne condition that takes beef, lamb, and pork off the table. (Full disclosure: I had a very mild case of AGS and mostly continued eating red meat even after being diagnosed. The syndrome — which I discovered after a handful of mysterious allergy attacks — doesn’t last forever, and the next time I was tested, it had gone away.)

That’s why I’m cheating on my own rules to mention H.R. 9382, introduced by Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ), even though there is (not yet!) any bipartisan support for the measure. (Sadly, it does not appear that any members of either party have joined Van Drew as co-sponsors.)

The bill would amend the Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act of 2004, the law that controls which ingredients must be listed on food labels as potential allergens. The law originally identified only eight “major food allergens” that have to be identified: milk, eggs, fish, shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, and soybeans; the bipartisan FASTER Act of 2021 added sesame to the list.

Van Drew’s legislation would make alpha-gal, the molecule found in most mammalian meat, lucky #10 on the “major food allergen” list.

As a proud AGS survivor, I have mixed feelings about this legislation. Although I’m happy to see the allergy gaining recognition, of course, I’m not positive it should be considered “major.” Even sesame, the newest addition to the list, is estimated to have 1.5 million Americans allergic to it — more than triple the number of Americans with AGS. It also doesn’t seem like a particularly hard allergen to track: if you’re worried about exposure to it, simply don’t buy red meat! Doesn’t seem that complicated.

Still, when I saw there was legislation related to the syndrome, I had to throw it a mention. Congress really does have its tentacles in everything. #JusticeForAGS

Add it up

By my count, the five pieces of legislation in today’s newsletter — which comprise only a fraction of the bills introduced this month — would impact approximately 60,450,016 Americans (2 million hit with Social Security overpayment notices each year + 17 million who receive school lunches but not summer lunches + 41 million older adults who report loneliness + 36 shark attack victims + 450,000 with AGS).

These may not be the flashiest, most hot-button issues, but they do impact everyday lives — and you can’t say members of Congress aren’t trying to come up with solutions across party lines. Whether those solutions receive votes is a different matter entirely.

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In other news: Harris’ first interview

Vice President Kamala Harris sat for her first interview since becoming a presidential candidate Thursday, sitting down with CNN’s Dana Bash in Georgia (alongside her running mate Tim Walz).

Here are the links to watch Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 of the interview. Here is a link to the transcript.

Some key points:

• Pressed on the issues she has flip-flopped on since her 2019 primary campaign, Harris repeatedly returned to the same response: “My values have not changed,” she said three times in the interview.

• Harris declined to distance herself from outgoing President Joe Biden, who she called “smart and loyal to the American people,” and from the economy they have overseen together. “We had to recover as an economy, and we have done that,” she declared.

• The VP signaled that she would nominate at least one Republican to her Cabinet if elected: “I think it would be to the benefit of the American public to have a member of my Cabinet who is a Republican.”

• Even as the sitting vice president, she repeatedly sought to claim the mantle of change, calling for America to “turn the page” on “an era that started about a decade ago where there is some suggestion…that the measure of the strength of a leader is based on who you beat down instead of…who you lift up.”

• Asked about Trump’s comments that she “turned Black,” Harris replied: “Same old, tired playbook. Next question, please.”

My take: Harris dodged many of the questions throughout the interview. She never really answered why her positions have changed on so many issues — Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, banning fracking, decriminalizing illegal immigration — since 2019, returning to the same line about her values not changing, but offering no rationale for the enormous shifts.

On other issues, she also declined to answer if there were policy changes she would make to end the Israel/Hamas war, saying only, “We have to get a deal done.” Similarly, Walz declined to answer why he said he had carried “weapons of war in war,” despite never seeing combat, beyond giving the lame excuse that “my grammar’s not always correct.”

As a journalist, that was frustrating to watch, since I do think those are important questions that the American people are owed answers to: what led her to adopt certain positions in 2019, what led her to drop them now, and how can the public know that her current stances are her final ones?

But, as a political analyst, I don’t think it matters much. From a style standpoint, she performed fine throughout the interview, committing no major gaffes and offering plenty of olive branches to the center, which is clearly what her campaign hoped she would do. There was no responses that were singularly memorable, so my guess is the interview won’t have much of an impact on the campaign one way or the other.

1. And the pedantic (but correct!) among you will note that Congress is not technically on recess, but meeting for pro forma sessions without conducting any business.

2. It’s true that Social Security arguably needs every dollar it can get — its trust fund is set to deplete in 11 years. But experts say that clawing back money from low-income individuals won’t do much to help Social Security in the long run; its much bigger (and sometimes devastating) impact is on the poor Americans Social Security is demanding from. Also, there are plenty of fixes to Social Security’s looming crisis that don’t involve ringing up Americans and asking them for money they don’t have the means to pay back.