The current Congress still has several weeks left to govern

Guest:	Loren Duggan
Title:	Deputy news director, Bloomberg Government
Summary:	A dramatically different Congress is waiting in the wings, but lawmakers still have several weeks to address funding, the NDAA, nominations, and other unfinished business. The challenge is determining what Republicans want to pass, what Democrats are willing to support, and how much can realistically get done before power changes hands.

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.

Interview transcript

Terry Gerton We had an election last week in case folks missed that. There are still some votes to count, but the size and shape of the majority in both chambers is now pretty clear. So you and I can stop guessing about what’s going to happen and start talking about what actually is happening. First, let’s talk about how the parties are approaching their leadership elections, which will be early this week. What are you hearing?

Loren Duggan Well, the House Republicans are the ones that are really having the biggest elections this week. Mike Johnson (R-La.), shortly after the election results came in on Wednesday, said he wouldn’t run. So that opens up the top spot and spots underneath that. So the marquee battle there will be between Steve Scalise (R-La.), the current number two Republican and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who was judiciary chairman, but somebody well known in Republican circles and, and, you know, has been a leading defender of the president over time. So the two of them are battling it out. But then the other jobs as well. There’s some competition there. And we’ll see with members back in town as they start talking to each other and thinking about how they want to proceed, how that will take shape. Interesting to note that this includes the new members who are coming into town for orientation. That’s a lengthy process. But obviously, the electorate for these jobs are the members elect for the next Congress. So smaller group of people. But obviously they will be making some consequential decisions about who will lead them in their new role in the minority next year.

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Terry Gerton And as we move into this lame duck session, the balance of power hasn’t shifted yet, but the Democrats are feeling like they might have a little bit more leverage in some of the conversations. First up is going to be what happens with the continuing resolution. And there’s rumor that shutdown talk may happen over funding for the war. What are you hearing there?

Loren Duggan Yeah, we heard that the big four, the people that need to make decisions on this, on the Appropriations Committees, may be meeting this week and trying to figure out a path forward. Obviously, they have a little bit more than a month to figure out what to do here, but there are a couple of options. One, another continuing resolution. Two, some sort of full year solution that takes into account many of the bills, all the bills we’ll have to see. Or if they can’t get their act together and do something by the 11th that a shutdown can’t be ruled out. Now maybe there’s a short term extension to later in the year or something like that. But that is an important question facing lawmakers and that continuing resolution also carried other things with it. Some programs like surface transportation are in there, the grant language to restrict what OMB can do and even the regulation of some THC infused beverages, which sometimes you’ll see advertising and some lobbying around. So there’s a lot at stake in that CR and they’ll have to think about how to approach that.

Terry Gerton Right behind the CR in terms of priority, at least for our listening audience, is the NDAA, which has been stuck in some strange limbo for a long time. It usually gets passed before the end of the year. What do you think the chances are?

Loren Duggan That’s something that I’ve always said that no one wants to be the armed services chairman to break the whatever 64, 65 year streak they’re looking at. I presume they’ll come back and work at trying to get that done. Maybe they’ll strip it back and drop some of this stuff, make it a narrowly tailored bill and that might make it easier. But those discussions should be picking up next week when they get back. And not to break this streak and to make sure that some of the important authorities that are in there for the end of the year around pay and things like that for the military are in place before the turn of the year, that is a very important reason why they always try to get that done. But for all the reasons that the Iran war was on voters’ minds, there could be some discussion around what do we put in this bill, what do leave out, and even if those discussions aren’t resolved this year, definitely would get kicked into the 120th with Democrats in control.

Terry Gerton Right, and it is the basis for the 2027 defense appropriation, which now is going to take on a different flavor, again, with the public opposition expressed through votes for the war and the concern for Democrats of funding the war. So those two pieces may be coming together.

Loren Duggan They could be coming together. Democrats have leverage even right now because you need 60 votes to get both the NDAA and the spending decisions through the Congress, unless you go the reconciliation route, which is that party line only thing, but a harder path to take and also takes a lot of time. But it you know, Democrats will probably try to get use their leverage that they have now, but they can also wait till next year and they can draw lines a little more starkly then. It’s kind of flashbacks to people around in ’06 and ’07 when the Iraq war was on top of minds with the Bush administration and then Democrats taking over in the Congress that followed. We’ll have to see if that’s a dynamic that also plays out next year. But a lot of people have a run on the mind and the consequences of the war when it comes to prices and things like that. So it could definitely feed into both of those debates.

Terry Gerton The one piece of legislation maybe that was closest to getting passed before the election is permitting reform. There seemed to be some bipartisan agreement about that. Do you think that’s going to come up and make it through?

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Loren Duggan So there was bipartisan agreement. There were two Republicans and two Democrats in the Senate who really took the lead on that, Environment and Public Works, Energy and Natural Resources. They came together, agreed to this piece of legislation, put it out, and then the recess happened, and now the election has happened. So it faces a little bit of a different climate than it did before, with some environmental groups pushing back. The likely natural resources chairman in the House next year, Jared Huffman (D-Ca.), is pushing back a little bit, so we’ll have to see if opposition will mount. There is bipartisan support for it, but you have to get it through both chambers to get into law, and we’ll see when they have this first procedural vote as they come back in the Senate this week, if it’s something that can move forward, do they need to make changes? It may be harder to start over on this, and that might make some people want to try and push this forward. So that’s the dynamic that people being face-to-face may have a big role in determining.

Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Loren Duggan from Bloomberg Government. Loren, let’s turn our sights to January when the new Congress is actually seated. From your perspective there at Bloomberg, what are the key committee assignments to watch?

Loren Duggan Well, I think two of the committees to watch are the House Oversight and House Judiciary committees because that’s where a lot of the investigations and oversight work will be coming from. The incoming chairs there, Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) at Judiciary, Robert Garcia (D-Ca.) at Oversite have been working together with the Minority Leader and coming up with a plan for how to attack this. Other committees will be involved as well, but I think Robert Garcia may have set the tone Tuesday night with his two-word statement, ‘lawyer up,’ which I think people heard loud and clear and will be figuring out how to navigate that. But when it comes to Iran, you will have the Armed Services Committees and the Foreign Affairs and Foreign Relations Committees looking at that very closely. A number of committees may get involved in the affordability questions that voters clearly had on their minds, whether that’s energy prices or healthcare costs, things like that. And those committees are spread wide. And then an issue that is gonna be there still, data centers and AI regulations, so places like the Energy and Commerce Committee on the House side and some of the technology facing committees on the Senate side. So there’s, there’s a big agenda that these results are going to kind of help foment and a lot of places where people are going to have to look.

Terry Gerton There’s a lot of talk right now about the balance between oversight and legislating, especially given that the president still holds the veto power. How much do you think that the Democratic majority is actually going to be able to move bipartisan laws through that can actually have a chance of getting signed?

Loren Duggan I think there is a chance, you know, that divided government sometimes produces results and the president, you now, he’s called himself Mr. Veto in recent days, but he’s also the author of The Art of the Deal, right? So I think that there are areas here where maybe Congressional Democrats in the White House can come up with something here. We saw, yes, the One Big Beautiful Bill was a very partisan law that was enacted over this Congress, but the housing bill was very bipartisan with broad support across both chambers. So, there’s different modes of legislating that they can do, you know, there might be things that they pass with just Democratic votes that might be to have a contrast with the administration. But if they want to get some of these big things done, if the infrastructure law slides into the next Congress, you’re going to need bipartisan support. Same for things like a farm bill, if they don’t wrap that up this year. So there are things, more routine things, but still places where the parties could potentially come together.

Terry Gerton Let’s wrap this up by talking about the early implications for certain of the executive branch departments. Department of Defense, let’s start there.

Loren Duggan I would think a lot of investigation will go on there. And there’s questions around the secretary and his leadership, the dismissal of people, the attacks on boats, and even, you know, some of the things around the name change, they might push back on that. That might be as much an investigation. But certainly, there are Democrats who have questions about the department and how money has been spent and some of their priorities there, and definitely some of these questions around the war.

Terry Gerton Homeland Security?

Loren Duggan Immigration, immigration, immigration. I know that’s top of mind for a lot of people and, and, you know, whether it’s the former secretary, Kristi Noem or Markwayne Mullen, or some of the other officials, questions about how those were carried out, probably questions about some of their contracting decisions for some of these private facilities — a lot of areas where they can explore there and I think that would be top of mind for people with that department.

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Terry Gerton Health and Human Services?

Loren Duggan Certainly, they have a new pediatrician coming to the Senate, Annie Andrews, and I think she might become a foil for somebody like the HHS secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. I think a lot of the decisions that have been made there will be probed. Vaccines might be probed as well, because there were a lot people uncomfortable with that. So I think there are probably some interesting hearings in the future for some of the decisions out of that department as well.

Terry Gerton Anything we haven’t covered this morning that you just want to make sure that people are keeping an eye on?

Loren Duggan I mean, I think we’ll be waiting to see what’s this lame duck going to look like? Is it going to be quick and people leave? Are they really going to have an ambitious agenda and get things through? nominations, a big question. Can the president get his picks through while he still has the Senate? Or, you know, next year is going to really tough. So interesting window coming up. The 120th is there, though, and that’ll be a blockbuster time when we get to it as well.

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