A tied vote, a stalled reconciliation package, and big questions about how laws actually get finished

Guest:	Mitchell Miller
Title:	Capitol Hill correspondent, WTOP
Summary:	Congress is wrestling with the big questions, but it’s the details that are slowing everything down. That tension between ambition and execution shows up across the agenda and it’s shaping what happens next.

The Federal Drive with Terry Gerton provides expert insights on current events in the federal community. Read more interviews to keep up with daily news and analysis that affect the federal workforce. Reach out to Terry and the Federal Drive producers with feedback and story ideas at FederalDrive@federalnewsnetwork.com.

Terry Gerton We only have 10 minutes. We could talk for an hour, but let’s start with international affairs. The president is just back from his trip to China. What were the reactions from folks on the Hill?

Mitchell Miller I think many lawmakers are just glad that the trip did not cause, frankly, any additional problems between these two countries. There’s still a lot of concerns among lawmakers about China trying to impose its will on Taiwan. There’s been talk in congressional hearings about stepped up naval operations in the South China Sea. So there is still some concern about what China is trying to do or not do, but also there was some concern that things might not go the right way in connection with what’s happening with the Strait of Hormuz. And essentially it kind of seemed to be a status quo situation where both countries, again, are trying to work their own will, but nothing really blew up in connection to this summit. So I think overall, lawmakers are generally satisfied, maybe a little bit underwhelmed. I know the president has said that there are various trade agreements, but it was just kind of, like I said, more of a status quo. It was almost more about the meeting itself than what came out of it.

Terry Gerton Sort of a do no harm approach.

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Mitchell Miller Exactly.

Terry Gerton Well, speaking of international relations, let’s talk about the Middle East. We had another War Powers vote in the House this past week.

Mitchell Miller Right. And I think we’re getting closer and closer to the point where Congress is going to try to reassert itself. We’ve seen these votes in the House and the Senate getting closer and closer as just a few more Republicans keep edging toward deciding that they want to see the administration take some kind of specific actions and try to wind down this war. The vote last week, 212/212. Literally one vote could have changed it. And it went down to defeat because it was a deadlock. But you had three Republicans voting with Democrats. One Democrat went against his party. But I think that the next time it comes up, it’s very possible that the War Powers resolution in the House could pass. And it’s a very similar situation in the Senate. The vote there was 50 to 49. Again, just a few Republicans joining Democrats. I think the fact that we’ve passed this 60-day resolution date that the Congress is supposed to say whether or not the President can move forward with military action. The fact that that has passed now for quite a while really has reawakened the need, at least among many lawmakers, for some type of congressional weigh-in on this issue.

Terry Gerton Mitchell, that tie vote just points to how close the margins are, and the House redistricting fight really got tossed on its head last week. Walk us through the current status of that.

Mitchell Miller Well, this has really now become political war, and that really isn’t that much of an exaggeration. The fact that the Democrats got rocked on their heels by the Virginia Supreme Court ruling that said that they could not move forward with four seats that would have given them a 10-1 versus a 6-5 margin, that really caused a huge stir within the Democratic Party. And then, of course, you’ve had all of these states in the South since the U.S. Supreme Court decision on the Voting Rights Act moving forward to eliminate black majority districts or at least Democrat districts. Whether it’s in Tennessee, Louisiana, Florida has released a map with four new seats for republicans. So last week House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries who really led the effort for Democrats to try to fight back against this redistricting by Republicans, he pledged that they are still going to win in November in the midterms. And he used the term that they will crush their souls, referring to the Republicans. Now the Democrats only have so many options at this point because legally and with the courts, there’s just not enough time. A lot of these elections are actually getting underway. There is kind of a hail Mary attempt, for example, in Maryland, where there is still an effort to get the state Senate President, Bill Ferguson, to go along with redistricting that would eliminate the one Republican seat held by Andy Harris, who’s the head of the House Freedom Caucus, but I’m doubtful that is going to happen. So really, it’s going to be back to the basics, I think, that the Democrats are going to try to use the polling that shows that they have a good chance of retaking the House, but certainly it’s a lot closer now since you have all these potential pickups due to redistricting by Republicans with that very margin as you noted.

Terry Gerton Mitchell Miller is Capitol Hill correspondent for WTOP. Mitchell, with all of this tension on the Hill, what is happening to member relations? How are people getting along? I mean, everything that they’ve got to move forward is requiring some kind of compromise.

Mitchell Miller Right. And it’s still very difficult, even on a good day. But now with the elections coming up and this redistricting really poisoning the well, if you will, in connection with what’s happening. And so, for example, you have the budget reconciliation process, which is fiercely partisan right now. Of course, Republicans are taking the lead on trying to get their ICE and border protection money approved, more than $70 billion. And they have to go, of course, through the Senate parliamentarian. Democrats are fighting them every inch of the way. And that’s why you saw last week, for example, the parliamentarian, at least initially said many large parts of Border Patrol and some of the other provisions in the GOP legislation had to be knocked out. So they are reworking that. So you’re going to see a lot of that from Democrats where they’ll claim these little mini victories as they try to slow things down for Republicans.

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Terry Gerton It seems like every legislative package is now a dueling versions headline. We have the housing bill and the aviation safety bills that are getting a lot of attention.

Mitchell Miller Right. So for example, on the housing bill, you have the fact that the Senate said, okay, we approved this a long time ago. The president is behind it. Let’s get it approved and across the finish line. But of course the House has other ideas and so they are making changes and they are likely to vote on that this week. It looks like they’re going to try to do it through suspension of the rules, which would mean a two thirds vote. So they’re gonna have to get Democrats on board. Some of the things that are involved in that is it would scale back the Senate’s limitations on institutional investors in the housing market. Something that the Senate wanted, the House does not. The House has a lot of other things that they want to add into this. This is a problem for both the House and the Senate, obviously, and we’ve talked about this before. There’s this increasing tension, not just between Democrats and Republicans, but within the Republican Party, between the House and the Senate to try to get these things done. And then you move over to the aviation bills. The ROTOR versus the ALERT bills is a huge battle in connection with basically what happened after the deadly accident at Reagan National Airport that killed 67 people back in 2025. You had the Senate’s ROTOR Act, which is much more narrow. It was looking at expanding what’s called ADS-BN, which is for cockpit traffic awareness. And then on the House side, they are taking a much more general approach where they want to add in a lot of different provisions. And so these two pieces of legislation are now at odds, and it’s really angered some of the members of the Senate Republicans  including Ted Cruise who had supported this. The head of the NTSB is not happy about the fact that the House is moving in its own direction but that’s where we are

Terry Gerton Mitchell, I’m kind of curious, both of those bills, the housing bill, the aviation bills really cover a lot of technical matter. There’s a crypto bill that’s creeping through. Given the Supreme Court rulings from the last couple of years that reduced the executive branch’s ability to legislate through regulation, if you will, are you seeing members of Congress write in more of the technical aspects of these issues into the legislation?

Mitchell Miller Yes, that’s a very good point because they know that because, as you mentioned, the courts have ruled in the way that you mentioned that they have to put in these very specific pieces of technical language, otherwise it may not get through or it may be ignored. And that’s just one of the examples of what’s happening with the ROTOR Act. I mean, that is why they tailored it very specifically in connection with these requirements of what happens in the cockpit. And there’s also similar technical language in the Alert Act as well, because there’s concern that if things are not specifically spelled out, and we saw this writ large with the DOGE Act, that if you don’t specifically say what Congress wants, then with these rulings over the past few months and years, the executive branch may say, well, we’re not going to do that, because it was never specifically laid out by Congress.

Terry Gerton It’s a really interesting point of tension then because the technicalities are where they’re getting hung up.

Mitchell Miller Exactly.

Terry Gerton Well there is a little bit of good news, if we switch topics to 2027 appropriations, some of the bills are starting to move and get votes.

Mitchell Miller How about that? We even saw a checkered flag for, at least in the House, for the VA military construction vote. Overwhelming bipartisan vote last week for more than $150 billion related to that appropriations project. That, of course, is just one of 12. But at this point, as we’ve talked about with all this tension here on Capitol Hill, they will take victories where they can. But that of course is just the start of this whole appropriations process. And believe it or not, here we are in May, but yes, there is already talk about some concern getting into the Fall with all the election tension going back and forth, that there could be another government shutdown. And related to that, the Senate last week passed legislation that would prohibit senators from being paid during a government shutdown

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