Knowing the Efficiency and Efficacy of Permanent Telehealth Options Act of 2021 or the KEEP Telehealth Options Act of 2021 This bill requires certain agencies to report on the availability and effects of expanded telehealth services under Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) during the public health emergency relating to COVID-19. Among other information, the Department of Health and Human Services must detail its actions during the emergency to expand access to telehealth services and must analyze telehealth usage by certain demographic groups. The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission and the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission must report on the efficiency and management of the telehealth expansion and related risks of fraudulent activity.
American Jobs in Energy Manufacturing Act of 2021 This bill revises the definition of qualifying advanced energy project for purposes of the tax credit for such project. Specifically, the bill expands the definition to include property designed to produce energy from water, property designed to produce energy conservation technologies, light-, medium-, or heavy-duty electric or fuel cell vehicles, certain hybrid vehicles, and manufacturing facilities designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The definition also includes projects located in a census tract in which a coal mine closed after 1999 and in which a coal-fired electric generating unit was retired after 2009, and provides additional credit allocations for projects to retool, expand, or build new facilities that make or recycle energy-related products, and for projects in communities where coal mines have closed or coal-fired electric units have been retired.
Death Tax Repeal Act of 2021 This bill repeals the estate and generation-skipping transfer taxes. It also makes conforming amendments related to the gift tax.
American Dream Employment Act of 2021 This bill permits the compensation of congressional employees who hold a current employment authorization document that was issued pursuant to a grant of (1) deferred action, including under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program; (2) deferred enforced departure; or (3) temporary protected status. (Generally, these programs and statuses allow eligible aliens to remain and work in the United States.)
Stabilize Medicaid and CHIP Coverage Act of 2021 This bill requires the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and state Medicaid programs to provide 12-month continuous enrollment for eligible individuals. The bill also establishes bonus payments for states that implement certain Medicaid enrollment and retention policies for specified categories of individuals (e.g., children), such as aligning income eligibility standards with those of other insurance affordability programs.
Methane Emissions Reduction Act of 2021 This bill requires the Department of the Treasury to estimate annual methane emissions from each oil and natural gas producing basin and levy a fee for such emissions on each company that produces, gathers, processes, or transmits oil or natural gas. The fees must be used to provide grants through the National Coastal Resilience Fund of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.
Child Poverty Reduction Act of 2021 This bill requires the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Census Bureau to take certain actions with respect to poverty measures and data related to child poverty. It also requires the National Academy of Sciences to report annually on child poverty and study other issues, such as policies to reduce intergenerational poverty. Specifically, HHS must enter into an agreement with the Census Bureau to annually report an anchored supplemental poverty measure for individuals under the age of 18 and must otherwise collaborate with the bureau to, for example, correct income data to account for underreporting. Currently, the Census Bureau uses the official poverty measure (based on cash resources) and the supplemental poverty measure (based on both cash and certain noncash resources, such as nutrition assistance program benefits) to measure poverty. Anchoring the supplemental poverty measure fixes the poverty threshold at a given point in time and then adjusts it for inflation. HHS must publish resources on its website related to child poverty, and the Census Bureau must release certain economic and survey data at the same time it releases a specific report related to income, poverty, and health insurance coverage in the United States.
Landowner Fairness Act This bill limits the use of eminent domain to take private property for the construction and operation of a natural gas pipeline facility. Specifically, this bill ends the legal presumption that natural gas exports are by definition in the public interest. In addition, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission must consider certain factors in issuing certificates of public convenience and necessity for natural gas projects. Finally, the bill prohibits the holder of a certification of public convenience and necessity from exercising the right of eminent domain for a pipeline designed to export liquefied natural gas to a foreign country.
Promoting Infrastructure by Protecting Our Subcontractors and Taxpayers Act This bill revises the transportation infrastructure finance and innovation program to require the Department of Transportation (DOT) to ensure that the design and construction of a project carried out under the program must have appropriate payment and performance security, regardless of whether the obligor is a state, local government, agency or instrumentality of a state or local government, public authority, or private party. DOT may accept such payment and performance security requirements if it makes a written determination that the federal interest is adequately protected.
Supporting Early-Career Researchers Act This bill authorizes the National Science Foundation (NSF) to establish a two-year pilot program to award grants to highly qualified early-career investigators to carry out an independent research program at the institution of higher education chosen by such investigator, to last for a period not greater than two years. In awarding grants, the NSF shall give priority to (1) early-career investigators who are from groups that are underrepresented in scientific research, and (2) early-career investigators who choose to carry out independent research at a minority-serving institution.
Girls' Leadership, Engagement, Agency, and Development Act of 2021 or the Girls LEAD Act This bill directs the Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to jointly report to Congress a strategy to strengthen the participation of adolescents, particularly girls, in democracy, human rights, and governance. The State Department and the USAID shall (1) implement activities to achieve this goal, including activities to increase adolescent girls' civic and political knowledge and skills and address barriers to political participation; and (2) prioritize foreign assistance funding for democracy, human rights, and governance programs toward achieving the goals in this bill.
Significant Transnational Criminal Organization Designation Act This bill makes membership in a significant transnational criminal organization a ground for inadmissibility into the United States and provides for criminal penalties against those that provide material support to such an organization. The bar against admission applies to an alien member of such an organization and an alien spouse or child of such an individual. The bar shall not apply to a spouse or child who (1) did not know, or should not reasonably have known, that the individual was a member of such an organization; or (2) has renounced the organization in question. The bill establishes statutory authority and procedures for the Department of Justice to designate an organization a significant transnational criminal organization. The Department of the Treasury may require U.S. financial institutions to block transactions involving assets belonging to such an organization. An individual who knowingly provides material support or resources to a significant transnational criminal organization (or attempts or conspires to do so) shall be fined, imprisoned for up to 20 years, or both. If the death of any person is the result, the offending individual may be imprisoned for any term of years or for life. A financial institution that becomes aware that it possesses or controls funds belonging to such an organization shall retain such funds and notify Treasury.
