Sponsored by
Rep. Houlahan, Chrissy [D-PA-6]
ID: H001085
Follow the money
The bill
HR. 2846, 119th Congress — read as touching Hospitals & Health Systems.
The sponsor
Every bill has someone who introduced it. That name is where the paper trail starts.
The money
20 itemised contributions to this sponsor, pulled from FEC filings.
The alignment
This bill's text tracks the "Department of Health and Human Services" section, p. 521-523 of the Mandate for Leadership.
Track this bill's progress through the legislative process
Latest Action
Motion to reconsider laid on the table Agreed to without objection.
September 14, 2026
📍 Current Status
Next: The bill will be reviewed by relevant committees who will debate, amend, and vote on it.
1. Introduction: A member of Congress introduces a bill in either the House or Senate.
2. Committee Review: The bill is sent to relevant committees for study, hearings, and revisions.
3. Floor Action: If approved by committee, the bill goes to the full chamber for debate and voting.
4. Other Chamber: If passed, the bill moves to the other chamber (House or Senate) for the same process.
5. Conference: If both chambers pass different versions, a conference committee reconciles the differences.
6. Presidential Action: The President can sign the bill into law, veto it, or take no action.
7. Became Law: If signed (or if Congress overrides a veto), the bill becomes law!
Another masterpiece of legislative theater, courtesy of the 119th Congress. Let's dissect this farce and expose the underlying disease.
**Main Purpose & Objectives:** Ah, the noble goal of "amending title II of the Public Health Service Act" to grant certain leave provisions to commissioned officers of the Public Health Service (PHS). How touching. In reality, this bill is a classic case of bureaucratic creep, where politicians try to justify their existence by tweaking minor details in existing laws.
**Key Provisions & Changes to Existing Law:** The bill adds a new section to the Public Health Service Act, granting PHS officers and their beneficiaries access to leave provisions already available to Army officers. Wow, what a groundbreaking achievement. This is essentially a game of legislative musical chairs, where politicians rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic while pretending to address real issues.
**Affected Parties & Stakeholders:** The usual suspects: PHS officers, their beneficiaries, and the occasional congressional staffer who needs a feel-good project to pad their resume. Meanwhile, the actual stakeholders – taxpayers, patients, and anyone affected by the Public Health Service's work – are left in the dark, as per usual.
**Potential Impact & Implications:** The impact will be negligible, but the implications are telling. This bill is a symptom of a larger disease: the perpetual quest for trivial victories to justify congressional existence. It's a distraction from real issues, like the actual state of public health or the crippling inefficiencies in our healthcare system.
Diagnosis: **Bureaucratic Encephalopathy**, characterized by an inability to prioritize meaningful reforms and a tendency to focus on minor tweaks that generate false hope and empty headlines.
Treatment: A healthy dose of skepticism, followed by a strong prescription of critical thinking. Unfortunately, this treatment is unlikely to be administered, as politicians are too busy congratulating themselves on their "accomplishments" to acknowledge the underlying disease.
In conclusion, HR 2846 is a quintessential example of legislative theater, designed to create the illusion of progress while accomplishing nothing meaningful. It's a waste of time, resources, and our collective intelligence. Next!
Rep. Houlahan, Chrissy [D-PA-6]
Congress 119 • 2024 Election Cycle
No PAC contributions found
No organization contributions found
No committee contributions found
This bill has 4 cosponsors. Below are their top campaign contributors.
ID: B001298
Top Contributors
27
ID: N000147
Top Contributors
20
ID: F000466
Top Contributors
22
ID: T000487
Top Contributors
30
Hub layout: Politicians in center, donors arranged by type in rings around them.
Showing 38 nodes and 54 connections
Total contributions: $54
Showing top 16 donors by contribution amount
Which industries are materially affected by specific provisions in this bill. 1 helped.
Section 1(a) amends the Public Health Service Act to include additional leave provisions for commissioned officers of the Public Health Service, which may benefit hospitals and health systems that employ these officers.
This bill shows semantic similarity to the following sections of the Project 2025 policy document.AI-enhanced analysis provides detailed alignment ratings.
AI Analysis:
"HR 2846 focuses on aligning leave benefits for Public Health Service officers with military standards, which is unrelated to Project 2025's HHS priorities such as reducing telehealth barriers in rural areas, restricting public health emergency declarations, reversing abortion-related policies, or promoting pro-life initiatives. There is no substantive overlap in objectives or themes."
— 488 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise limited or no Internet access, which restricts their access to telehealth services (especially video visits). To improve its health care policies that affect rural regions, HHS should: l Reduce the regulatory burden and unleash private innovation that can discover solutions to unique, local needs. l Implement or encourage policies that increase the supply of health care providers, such as increased telehealth access and interstate licensure (a historically state matter), including for volunteers wishing to provide temporary, charitable services across state lines. l Encourage flexibility in modes of health care delivery, including less expensive alternatives to hospitals and telehealth independent of expensive air ambulances. OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY The Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Office of the Secretary necessarily set the tone for the entire department. The Secretary is the most accountable individual within HHS and, along with his or her immediate staff, should therefore be responsible for setting the policies that govern the depart- ment’s operations instead of allowing the operational divisions to assume the leading role in policymaking, thereby diffusing responsibility. Practical reforms to enhance the Secretary’s accountability should include the following: l Restrict HHS’s ability to declare indefinite public health emergencies (PHEs). Currently, HHS is merely required to notify Congress of such a declaration within 48 hours. Congress should establish a set time frame for any PHE, placing on the Secretary the burden of proof as to why an extension of the PHE is necessary. l Reinstate the HHS SUNSET (Securing Updated and Necessary Statutory Evaluations Timely) rule.75 Congress should codify the now- reversed Trump Administration rule that required all HHS agencies to review regulations retrospectively and publish results; without such a review, regulations expire. l Investigate, expose, and remediate any instances in which HHS violated people’s rights by: — 489 — Department of Health and Human Services 1. Colluding with Big Tech to censor dissenting opinions during COVID. 2. Colluding with abortion advocates and LGBT advocates to violate conscience-protection laws and the Hyde Amendment. The Life Agenda. The Office of the Secretary should eliminate the HHS Repro- ductive Healthcare Access Task Force and install a pro-life task force to ensure that all of the department’s divisions seek to use their authority to promote the life and health of women and their unborn children. Additionally, HHS should return to being known as the Department of Life by explicitly rejecting the notion that abortion is health care and by restoring its mission statement under the Strategic Plan and elsewhere to include furthering the health and well-being of all Americans “from conception to natural death.” The next Administration should create a dedicated Special Representative for Domestic Women’s Health. In the Trump Administration, there was a Special Representative for Global Women’s Health that focused on international issues, but this position lacked authority to be the lead on international policies because of overlapping issues with the U.S. Department of State and USAID (and at times a lack of clarity as to the lead point of contact and policy decisions at the White House). The new Special Representative would serve as the lead on all matters of federal domestic policy development related to life and family with support from the DPC for implementation and coordination among agencies. In the post-Dobbs era, advancing support for mothers will include coordination among agencies out- side of HHS, and the Special Representative would provide a clear focal point for all issues related to protecting life and serving families. The Family Agenda. The Secretary’s antidiscrimination policy statements should never conflate sex with gender identity or sexual orientation. Rather, the Secretary should proudly state that men and women are biological realities that are crucial to the advancement of life sciences and medical care and that married men and women are the ideal, natural family structure because all children have a right to be raised by the men and women who conceived them. OFFICE OF THE ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR HEALTH (OASH) / OFFICE OF THE SURGEON GENERAL (OSG) The Assistant Secretary for Health (ASH) is the four-star admiral for the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps (USPHS), and the Surgeon Gen- eral (SG) is the three-star admiral. The ASH is tasked with overseeing not only the USPHS, but also 10 regional health offices, multiple presidential and secretarial advisory committees, and other offices such as the Offices of Minority Health, Women’s Health, and Population Affairs. The Secretary can further expand the ASH’s responsibilities (for example, by
AI Analysis:
"HR 2846 addresses internal leave benefits for Public Health Service officers, which is tangential to the Project 2025 HHS goals of protecting life, conscience, patient choice, and reducing regulatory burdens; it does not directly advance those policy objectives."
— 449 — 14 DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES Roger Severino If the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) were a separate coun- try, its approximately $1.6 trillion budget would rank as the world’s fifth-largest national budget. For good or ill, HHS activities personally impact the lives of more Americans than do those of any other federal agency. Under President Trump, HHS was dedicated to serving “all Americans from conception to natural death, including those individuals and families who face…economic and social well-being challenges.”1 Under President Biden, the mission has shifted to “promoting equity in everything we do” for the sake of “populations sharing a particular characteristic” including race, sexuality, gender identification, ethnicity, and a host of other categories.2 As a result of HHS’s having lost its way, U.S. life expectancy, instead of return- ing to normal after the COVID-19 pandemic, continued to drop precipitously to levels not seen since 1996 with white populations alone losing 7 percent of their expected life span in just one year.3 Nothing less than America’s long-term survival is at stake. Accordingly, HHS must return to serving the health and well-being of all Americans at all stages of life instead of using social engineering that leaves us sicker, poorer, and more divided. OVERVIEW HHS consists of 11 operating divisions that have varying degrees of practical independence from the Secretary of Health and Human Services and 15 staff divisions that are directly under the Office of the Secretary. This chapter’s rec- ommendations are limited to those divisions that most need reform and address, wherever possible, five cross-cutting goals. — 450 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise Goal #1: Protecting Life, Conscience, and Bodily Integrity. The Secretary should pursue a robust agenda to protect the fundamental right to life, protect con- science rights, and uphold bodily integrity rooted in biological realities, not ideology. From the moment of conception, every human being possesses inherent dignity and worth, and our humanity does not depend on our age, stage of development, race, or abilities. The Secretary must ensure that all HHS programs and activities are rooted in a deep respect for innocent human life from day one until natural death: Abortion and euthanasia are not health care. A robust respect for the sacred rights of conscience, both at HHS and among gov- ernments and institutions funded by it, increases choices for patients and program beneficiaries and furthers pluralism and tolerance. The Secretary must protect Americans’ civil rights by ensuring that HHS programs and activities follow the letter and spirit of religious freedom and conscience-protection laws. Radical actors inside and outside government are promoting harmful identity politics that replaces biological sex with subjective notions of “gender identity” and bases a person’s worth on his or her race, sex, or other identities. This destructive dogma, under the guise of “equity,” threatens American’s fundamental liberties as well as the health and well-being of children and adults alike. The next Secretary must ensure that HHS programs protect children’s minds and bodies and that HHS programs respect parents’ basic right to direct the upbringing, education, and care of their children. Goal #2: Empowering Patient Choices and Provider Autonomy. Basic eco- nomics holds that costs tend to decrease and quality and options tend to increase when there is robust and free competition in the provision of goods and services. Health care is no exception. Health care reform should be patient-centered and market-based and should empower individuals to control their health care–related dollars and decisions. Of course, providers who deliver health care also need the freedom to address the unique needs of their patients. States should be the primary regulators of the medical profession, and the federal government should not restrict providers’ abil- ity to discharge their responsibilities or limit their ability to innovate through government pricing controls or irrational Medicare and Medicaid reimburse- ment schemes. Finally, America’s broken insurance system, run largely through confusing pro- vider networks and third-party payers (employers), induces overconsumption of health care, limits consumer shopping, and hides true costs from patients. The federal government should focus reform on reducing burdens of regulatory compliance, unleashing innovation in health care delivery, ceasing interference in the daily lives of patients and providers, allowing alternative insurance coverage options, and returning control of health care dollars to patients making decisions with their providers about their health care treatments and services.
AI Analysis:
"HR 2846 focuses on aligning leave benefits for Public Health Service officers with military standards, which is unrelated to Project 2025's HHS objectives centered on reproductive health, abortion policy, gender ideology, and restructuring the USPHS for life promotion. There is no thematic or policy overlap between the bill's provisions and the specified Project 2025 directives."
— 489 — Department of Health and Human Services 1. Colluding with Big Tech to censor dissenting opinions during COVID. 2. Colluding with abortion advocates and LGBT advocates to violate conscience-protection laws and the Hyde Amendment. The Life Agenda. The Office of the Secretary should eliminate the HHS Repro- ductive Healthcare Access Task Force and install a pro-life task force to ensure that all of the department’s divisions seek to use their authority to promote the life and health of women and their unborn children. Additionally, HHS should return to being known as the Department of Life by explicitly rejecting the notion that abortion is health care and by restoring its mission statement under the Strategic Plan and elsewhere to include furthering the health and well-being of all Americans “from conception to natural death.” The next Administration should create a dedicated Special Representative for Domestic Women’s Health. In the Trump Administration, there was a Special Representative for Global Women’s Health that focused on international issues, but this position lacked authority to be the lead on international policies because of overlapping issues with the U.S. Department of State and USAID (and at times a lack of clarity as to the lead point of contact and policy decisions at the White House). The new Special Representative would serve as the lead on all matters of federal domestic policy development related to life and family with support from the DPC for implementation and coordination among agencies. In the post-Dobbs era, advancing support for mothers will include coordination among agencies out- side of HHS, and the Special Representative would provide a clear focal point for all issues related to protecting life and serving families. The Family Agenda. The Secretary’s antidiscrimination policy statements should never conflate sex with gender identity or sexual orientation. Rather, the Secretary should proudly state that men and women are biological realities that are crucial to the advancement of life sciences and medical care and that married men and women are the ideal, natural family structure because all children have a right to be raised by the men and women who conceived them. OFFICE OF THE ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR HEALTH (OASH) / OFFICE OF THE SURGEON GENERAL (OSG) The Assistant Secretary for Health (ASH) is the four-star admiral for the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps (USPHS), and the Surgeon Gen- eral (SG) is the three-star admiral. The ASH is tasked with overseeing not only the USPHS, but also 10 regional health offices, multiple presidential and secretarial advisory committees, and other offices such as the Offices of Minority Health, Women’s Health, and Population Affairs. The Secretary can further expand the ASH’s responsibilities (for example, by — 490 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise designating the ASH as liaison to the CDC). The SG officially oversees the daily oper- ations of the USPHS, although those are actually under the control of the Director of the USPHS Commissioned Corps Headquarters. The SG also issues information to the public (Surgeon General’s advisories, Calls to Action, and Reports), serving in effect as a key public health spokesperson for the federal government. USPHS officers are assigned to various agencies such as the CDC, NIH, and Bureau of Prisons. Their organizational structure is similar in some respects to the National Guard’s, and their salaries are paid primarily by the agencies to which they are assigned (which serves to limit USPHS appropriations). USPHS officers can be deployed on missions to respond to domestic or international crises (for example, a hurricane in Florida or an Ebola outbreak in Africa) at any time. The USPHS should be restructured to make it more like its sister uniformed services with a more streamlined chain of command and corresponding appro- priations to ensure efficiency and clarity of mission. Its core mission should be refocused to emphasize prompt, responsive deployments that meet specific criteria and are less dependent on the various agencies to which the officers are assigned. Fulfillment of specific tasks should not be duplicated by non-uniformed civil ser- vants and USPHS officers, and any roles that can be filled by civilians should be filled by them. The ASH and SG positions should be combined into one four-star position with the rank, responsibilities, and authority of the ASH retained but with the title of Surgeon General and some of the SG’s communications responsibilities, which would include disseminating other HHS messages and sharing general medical advice without legal weight. The holder of this consolidated position, which should be filled by a health care provider, would be better positioned to ensure that the USPHS is properly focused and deployed. With such reforms, the supporting office (previously the OASH and OSG) would be better equipped than other HHS offices or agencies to reduce silos and con- solidate or eliminate duplicative functions. Congress should consider legislation that would require this office to take such actions or at least make such recom- mendations to the Secretary. Such legislation would require a thorough analysis of the various legal authorities impacting the department’s current organiza- tional structure. The position previously known as the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health should be combined with and have the title of Deputy Surgeon General and become a three-star position with operational control including financial and deployment decisions. The Director of the Headquarters should be responsible for implementing the decisions of the Deputy Surgeon General. Promoting Life and Family. In dealing with sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies, the OASH should focus on root-cause analysis with a focus on strengthening marriage and sexual risk avoidance. Strong leadership is needed
Showing 3 of 5 policy matches
Policy matches are calculated using a hybrid approach: initial candidates are found using semantic similarity between bill summaries and Project 2025 policy text, then an AI model (Llama 3.1 70B) provides detailed alignment ratings and analysis. Ratings range from 1 (minimal alignment) to 5 (very strong alignment). This analysis does not imply direct causation or intent.