Attorney General Loretta Lynch, please add Melanie Rainer to your “thank you” list. When Lynch’s confirmation vote was stalled for more than a month as Senate Republicans and Democrats squabbled over abortion language in an otherwise uncontroversial bill opposing human trafficking, Rainer worked to find a compromise to break the logjam on behalf of her boss, Ranking Member Sen. Patty Murray, D-Washington, of the Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee. “I was coordinating with the women’s groups, bringing them in, trying to get them in a good place, but also speaking with [Texas Republican Sen. John] Cornyn’s and [Majority Leader Mitch] McConnell’s folks, all alongside [Minority Leader Harry] Reid’s folks,” said Rainer, the Committee Democrats’ Senior Counsel for Women’s Affairs and Affordable Care Act. “We needed to end in a place where everyone got what they needed but also we weren’t ending up in a worse-off place.”
On April 21, Murray and Cornyn announced the compromise Rainer helped hammer out. Within two days, the Senate passed the bill and confirmed Lynch. Rainer came to the Hill in 2013 after nearly three years working on ACA implementation at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. As Murray’s ACA lead, Rainer hailed the U.S. Supreme Court’s June decision for the government in King v. Burwell, calling it “this looming cloud that turned into a sun.”
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