In addition to delivering urgently needed COVID relief and funding the government for 2021, the massive bills we enacted this week include several provisions I sponsored or helped to make happen.

The government funding bill included my Know the Price Act, which bans the gag clauses negotiated between insurance companies and health care providers that prevent hospitals from telling us in advance how much a procedure is going to cost. https://malinowski.house.gov/media/press-releases/representative-malinowski-introduces-bipartisan-know-price-act

We also enacted a key provision from my Providing Protective Equipment Act, requiring a monthly public report on how much PPE and other medical equipment is held in our Strategic National Stockpile, so we can ensure it is adequately supplied for any future pandemic.

Last year, I led an effort to restore @DHSgov programs Trump had cut to fight domestic terrorism and extremism, including rising anti-semitic violence.

For next year's budget, we've tripled that funding, enabling the Biden administration to take this fight to the next level.

We also got a provision into the funding package that requires the Army Corps of Engineers to keep working with #NJ07 communities to prevent flooding of the Rahway River. This reverses the Army Corps' decision to pull out of the project, and is a huge win especially for Cranford.

Finally, I've updated folks regularly here on the progress of our historic bill to ban the anonymous shell companies that enable so much corruption and crime. It was included in the Defense bill that Trump vetoed. When we overrode that veto, it became law! https://www.vox.com/22188223/congress-anti-money-laundering-anonymous-shell-companies-ban-defense-bill

Now, understandably, Congress gets a lot of flack for stuffing smaller pieces of legislation like these into massive end-of-year bills that no member can read in their entirety. To explain why this happens, I'll tell you about a bill I failed to get done this year.

In February, the House easily approved a bill I'd introduced to reauthorize a program to protect America's estuaries. We had bipartisan support in the Senate, but it's so hard to get votes scheduled there that the only way to pass most stand-alone bills is by unanimous consent.

Last week, a lone Senator objected to unanimous consent on our estuaries bill, so it died. We don't even know who it was, or why, since Senators can do this secretly.

Next time, if I can put it in a 5,000 page spending bill, I will. Or better yet, let's fix the U.S. Senate.