Congress managed to take care of all the spending bills it needed to before heading out the door for August recess. Lots is still on the agenda, though, for when it returns — including a local matter concerning Reagan International Airport. Plus, there’s been some rare bipartisanship as members share in the one thing they can still always agree on: dressing down a federal official. For more on this, Federal News Network executive producer Eric White spoke to WTOP Capitol Hill correspondent Mitchell Miller on the Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

Interview transcript: 

Eric White  Well, Congress managed to take care of all of its spending bills that it needed to before heading out of the door for August recess. Lots still on the agenda, though, when it returns, including a local matter concerning Reagan International Airport. Plus, some rare bipartisanship, as members share in the one thing they can still always agree on: dressing down a federal official. For more on this, we welcome WTOP Capitol Hill correspondent Mitchell Miller. Mitchell, always a pleasure to talk to you. All right. So, why don’t we start out with that dressing down that they did to the now former head of the Secret Service? Obviously, there were some mistakes made and everybody was kind of just getting in on the like, I guess whipping post that they put the director on there. What was it like in that room, and what was the tension like?

Mitchell Miller  Well, this is really something that I had not seen in a hearing in quite some time, where you actually have a witness. Usually, one party or another will sort of defend the witness and the other side will go on the attack. In this case, you had a career Secret Service, then director, Kimberly Cheadle, who was getting attacked by both sides, Republicans and Democrats. She is someone who had served in the Secret Service for nearly 30 years, but on this day, she was just under siege. And because of the obvious mistakes that were made, which she has acknowledged, lawmakers just jumped right in. And what really got to many of the lawmakers during the hearing was the fact that she repeatedly just would not be able to answer any of the questions or felt like she couldn’t answer the questions. So, when they were asking about why the attempting assassin was able to get up on the roof, why he was able to fly a drone, all of these questions. The more she didn’t answer the questions, the more frustrated they got. And it was pretty extraordinary to see Democrats and Republicans come together on this. And this is something that you never see happen, which was at the end of the hearing, the House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, and the ranking Democrat, Jamie Raskin of Maryland, both issuing a joint statement basically saying that she had to go. So, there was really no surprise that the following day that she did step down. And now where we are is moving toward a bipartisan task force investigating the attempted assassination of former President Trump. And this will actually be a bipartisan effort. House Speaker Mike Johnson has indicated that he wants to have Democrats and Republicans. So, Republicans, as these special panels go, Republicans will have one more vote, but they’re going to have 13 members of this panel investigating the assassination attempt. So, in the midst of all the wild things that are happening with the political campaign and all the differences between Republicans and Democrats, ironically, it was the attempted assassination on former President Trump that, in this instance, brought the two parties together.

Eric White  Yeah, gave me vibes of the dressing down of the major car companies that were testifying in Congress back in, I think, 2008 when they were receiving bailouts. And then members of Congress found out they all took private jets to get there. That was the last time I think I had seen something like this. And yeah, I mean, the call for unity kind of ended with the Republican National Convention where campaigning kind of went back into full swing pretty quickly there. But it seems as if the already elected members are taking notice and actually making those calls for unity a reality.

Mitchell Miller  Yeah, I think that, you know, in this instance, this is something that both parties can get together on. And so I think this investigation will go pretty swiftly over the next few months. There are a variety of committees in the House and Senate investigating various angles related to this. But you also have the FBI director Christopher Wray testifying last week, and giving some new details related to the attempt on the life of the former president. But this is something that has been a rare moment of bipartisanship, because otherwise, everything is going in opposite directions.

Eric White  We’re speaking with WTOP Capitol Hill correspondent Mitchell Miller. Another issue that both sides of the aisle seem to agree on is that nobody likes to stay in D.C. for any portion of August, as the House was only able to pass through a handful of the spending bills required of them before heading out the door for August recess. What is the status of the other ones remaining and which ones did they get done?

Mitchell Miller  The House decided to leave, but they did not finish near anything close to what they wanted to get done at the start of this session. At the beginning of the session, House Speaker Mike Johnson had pledged that the House would get all 12 appropriations done by the August recess. There was a lot of skepticism about that and it appears to have been well placed. The house actually ended up only getting five of the 12 appropriations bills done. They managed to get one more bill done last week on interior, but otherwise, they still have these other bills still hanging out here. So, forgive me if this sounds familiar, and you’ve seen this movie before, but lawmakers will be returning back in September. And, yes, they will be likely taking up a continuing resolution because they just couldn’t get this all done. The Senate is trying to move forward as well. They’re trying to get some appropriations bills moved through in committee, but they have not taken up any on the Senate floor. So, what’s interesting, though, is the dynamic that happened right before House lawmakers left. Usually the House Freedom Caucus, the most conservative members of the Republican Party in Congress, they usually are really upset because things are not done. But for whatever reason, that seemed like there was a fait accompli here. And many Republicans just knew that this because this is a campaign season, that this was not going to get done, because there are so many differences between the two parties on spending priorities. So, we are going to find ourselves in a very familiar position when the House returns in September, and they will have to quickly pass a continuing resolution, really in a matter of weeks before the end of the fiscal year.

Eric White  Yeah, and another issue that seems to be not going away, and it was a big story for WTOP, and that is the the slot wars going on at Reagan National Airport regarding the proposal to add more flights. Lots of members of Congress are supporting it, but the local representation of Delaware, Maryland and Virginia are not so pleased about it. Where do things stand now with that?

Mitchell Miller  Right. Well, they are moving forward, and they’re trying to get the slots picked. They have a tentative list of various slots that would be added. But as you mentioned, Maryland and Virginia lawmakers really are doing everything that they possibly can to see if they can at least delay this. And one of the ways that they are trying to do that is, Virginia Congressman Jerry Connolly seized on the fact that there was just that huge airline meltdown over the past week where you had the software problem that really affected many of the airlines, but particularly Delta Airlines, and Delta is one of those that would benefit from these expanded slots. So, Congressman Connolly, writing off to federal regulators and the Transportation Department saying wait, hold on a second. You can’t do this until we investigate what happened here with the airlines. And there is a DOT investigation underway to see what happened with why Delta was not able to as quickly get up and running as some of the others. American Airlines also had problems. But some of the other airlines did not, were able to get back on line with their computer systems relatively quickly. One interesting footnote related to that was Southwest Airlines, which has had major problems in the past was not on the same computer system. So, their passengers were not as seriously affected. But I think we are going to see local lawmakers continue to push this effort to try to delay the slot additions a little bit longer.

Eric White  And Virginia representative Connolly was also busy addressing the cybersecurity patch requirements for federal agencies, which is relevant because it was a patch update that caused that outage. What is it that Connolly is looking for from the federal agencies that he was addressing?

Mitchell Miller  Well, Jerry Connolly has made this a real point for him over the years in connection with cybersecurity and information technology. And his subcommittee basically wants federal agencies to get more on the same page with what they’re doing. He feels like it’s a big patchwork of various cybersecurity requirements for various agencies and doesn’t really feel that they are all coming together. And he says because it’s a patchwork, that’s what allows hackers to get in. The vulnerabilities are, are they — really trying to do is make sure that all of these agencies and the federal government are on the same page as they try to continually address the cybersecurity issues because as you well know, the hackers and the people that want to mess around with various computer systems always seem to be like a little half step or a full step ahead of what the bureaucracy is doing. So, he wants to basically light a fire under these agencies and get a little bit more compliance with a lot of these requirements that have been put forward by the Biden administration. But there’s been a variety of compliance as you go across the government.

Eric White  All right, well, we’ll definitely keep an eye on that for sure. WTOP Capitol Hill correspondent Mitchell Miller, thank you for the update as always,

Mitchell Miller  You bet.

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