Capitol Hill monitors enter a wait and see period

Congress has gone into a two week recess, however the entirety of the debt ceiling debate took up a lot of time that could’ve been used to address other confirmations and hearings. So that mean it’s going to be a busy summer once members return. To discuss what’s on tap,  Federal Drive with Tom Temin turned to Bloomberg Government’s Loren Duggan.

Interview Transcript: 

Loren Duggan Well, I think if you look off the floor, you see the development of some of the key pieces of legislation that need to happen by both Sept.30 and the end of the year. One of the big debates, obviously, is always government funding. And we’ve seen a lot of action in both the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, which was allowed to move forward after the debt limit bill. But we see this divergence happening that we can talk about some more. But the two chambers are heading kind of in different paths right now, which could be tricky as the year goes on. We’ve also seen a lot of action this week or last week on the defense authorization bill, which is another big measure that sets policy for the Pentagon. And then we’re starting to see more discussion about things like the farm bill and the [Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)]. So lawmakers are really looking at these deadline driven things and saying, oh, we only have so much time left to do these with breaks, like the two week one that we’re in right now, and a lot to get done before the end of the year.

Eric White Yeah, it seems like after the debt limit was finally put aside and now folks are finally getting back to business and they’re like, oh, well, that really did take way too long.

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Loren Duggan Yes, definitely that affected the schedule. And they’re trying to do a lot more in the compressed schedule they have. But there’s still a lot of big questions hanging over. The debt limit deal resolved one big matter, but left a lot of question marks for Congress to fill in.

Eric White There are also a ton of nominees that are up for Senate confirmation. And with nominations, we always get the folks who are threatening to block those nominations. What are some of the top level ones that you have heard from that camp?

Loren Duggan Well, we’ve seen a lot of judicial nominees process this year, obviously, and that will continue as as they get them from the White House, have the hearings and push those through. We also see a lot of deputy secretary level ones moving, including one for the Agriculture Department right when we get back from the break. But some of the big ones outstanding, there’s still no Labor secretary Julie Sue’s (D-Wis.) nomination feels like it’s still in limbo. We’ll be waiting to see when they get back if there’s going to be enough support to move that forward. The question marks there around Democrats still, which is usually we talk about Republicans opposing, but in this case, it’s been does she have enough Democratic support to move forward? And then obviously, military nominees have been blocked by Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), who’s unhappy about the Pentagon’s policies around abortion and has held up most of the senior positions there. And there are some key ones that obviously need to be processed in the coming week. So that is a lot of floor activity that needs to happen on those. And you have to pepper in some of these legislative questions as well. But that’s been one of the Senate’s top jobs is confirming people that will continue. But there’s going to be competing priorities as well when they come back.

Eric White Speaking of Senate activity and House activity, you mentioned the divergence in spending measures. What can you tell me on where the Senate stands and where the House stands? Obviously, two differing opinions on major spending bills.

Loren Duggan Well, there seems to be agreement on defense spending. If you remember, back to the debt limit deal, they agreed on spending caps, defense, non-defense. The defense side is pretty agreed upon, but the non-defense side is where there’s going to be some divergence. For one thing, the allocations that the House and Senate committees have adopted diverged. The Senate stuck to the amount in the cap still. The House is going lower, saying that was a ceiling, not a floor. And then beyond that, the Senate is also talking about do we need to do supplementals or find other ways to pump money into it? And one thing they’re going to do is try to rescind money from elsewhere and use that to kind of offset what’s in the bill. So a lot to still happen there. And then beyond funding, there are the policy riders that come up here. Republicans are writing the bills in the House. Democrats are largely riding them in the Senate, though, getting bipartisan support from their Republican colleagues. So that’s the other clash that’ll happen once you figure out how much to fund, what policy riders do you bring back, which do you drop, and which new ones do you add? There’s a lot going to happen there. And then on the authorization side as well, some of those same dynamics about policy riders are going to creep into that. Even if the top line spending is fairly similar, there’s still a lot of details to work out in a bill like that.

Eric White All right. And aside from the policy things, there are a lot of political developments that occurred in Congress this week. What is censoring and what does that mean for Adam Schiff (D-Calif.)?

Loren Duggan Well, Adam Schiff on round two, because they had tried the week before to do this, but they finally got enough Republicans to support the resolution censuring him. The immediate punishment was to come down to the floor of the House and basically be read the resolution by Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). But it also opened up an investigation that will start to happen now into him. And we’ll see if there’s any follow up to that or further punishment. We also saw last week a vote by the House to refer an impeachment resolution back to committee. So Homeland Security and Judiciary, looking at the Joe Biden and his border policies and whether those amounts are high crime or misdemeanor. So that’s still going to come. And then there are other impeachment resolutions out there that members want to pursue, whether it’s FBI Director Wray or or other officials. Joe Biden, obviously one of them as well. So I think we could see more of this, Alejandro Mayorkas, the DHS secretary has been mentioned. So these are going to be in the background. There is some dispute among Republicans about whether this is the right way to go about it, should they go through committee investigations. So we’ll see that as well. And then there is still out there both the federal case against George Santos (R-N.Y.) and then an ethics investigation into him as well. So a lot happening there on the investigative front, both on the floor, but mostly in committees that we may not see for a little bit.

Eric White Yeah, the impeachment of cabinet secretaries is a thing that interests me because it’s not one that you hear about a lot. Mostly they try to just go for the top dog. But what can you tell me? Is that process any different or is it just basically the same thing? You just have to have the votes lined up.

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Loren Duggan You have to have the votes lined up. Obviously in this case, you need a simple majority in the House. If you can get all the Republicans onside and they say, yes, that would create a trial over in the Senate. It’s a little rare to see, as you said, the cabinet secretaries, but not completely unprecedented. We’ve seen it for the president many times in recent years. And we’ve seen, he can do the same thing to a federal judge, although that tends to be handled a little bit differently, because usually those cases are cut and dry and there’s some pretty in-your-face wrongdoing there. So we’ll see what’s happening with those cases if they get to the floor for a vote. And then if there’s a Senate trial, obviously we’ll have to watch that very closely as well. And that would also take away from Senate floor time to do other things, because those trials can be pretty laborious and time consuming as you go through whatever evidence the house presents.

Eric White All right. And anything else to keep an eye on as we head into this recess on what folks are doing in their districts or anybody else going to be preparing for any other sort of hearings that are coming up.

Loren Duggan I mean, I think all these hearings are going to fire back up once they’re back in town. We know that James Comer has a lot of different investigations he’d like to do. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who’s both the judiciary chair and this weaponization of government subcommittee chair, has some topics there. We saw Ways and Means do some things around the Hunter Biden tax case and some whistleblowers, as they describe them, who were brought into a closed meeting. So the investigative wheels are going to turn. They’re still going to bring cabinet officials in talking about lots of different issues. So it’s going to be another busy hearing season in this July session as these bills also continue to move forward.

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