First Branch Forecast for August 1, 2022: Reconciliation

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This week. The House floor is closed until Sept.13 (with committee work starting on Sept. 6); the Senate is in for its last scheduled week until Sept. 6. The Senate will stick around until it passes the “Inflation Reduction Act,” AKA mini-reconciliation, timing depending on Democratic Members not testing positive for COVID; and the House is expected to return to pass that bill during August recess.

In Senate committee news this week: the Judiciary Cmte will hold a hearing on antitrust remedies (but Sen. Schumer still hasn’t scheduled antitrust bills for a floor vote). HSGAC will hold a markup of a few good-government bills. And Senate Rules Cmte will hold a hearing on the Electoral Count Act, following up on the bipartisan proposal to reform the ECA. We note some Members are voicing dissatisfaction with the proposal — as Rep. Raskin told Politico, the effort is “fine and necessary, but not remotely sufficient to meet the magnitude of the threat against democracy now.” (The Jan. 6 panel reportedly plans to release its own slate of recommendations for stopping the stealing of elections this fall, a time when there is the least amount of legislative runway.)

Last week, Senate Democrats published their FY 2023 approps bills. We’ve added the bill text, explanatory statements, and summaries to our tracker (toggle to the Senate tab) and will be working through the bills in the weeks to come. It seems obvious to us that there won’t be a markup process in the Senate, just like last year, and everything will get worked out — if anything gets worked out — behind the scenes. Sen. Leahy says he hopes the release of draft bills encourages good-faith Republican negotiation and emphasized the high stakes of repeating last year’s delays. Senate Republicans published a list of demands for items they consider “non-starters” and threatened a long term CR. It’s clear we’re heading for a short term CR, probably until after the heat of the election. We likely will hear a lot of carping about budget reconciliation as well.

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First Branch Forecast for July 25, 2022: Après moi, le déluge

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This week. In the House, it’s the last week before summer recess. It’s also the Senate’s penultimate week before recess — though we’re seeing calls for both chambers to stay in session. The House will consider a huge semiconductor R&D bill and perhaps public safety legislation concerning firearms. Senate Democratic Appropriators may publish their approps bills. Expect scores of UC and suspension bills.

In committee this week, House Admin will hold two relevant hearings: one on foreign and domestic sources of disinformation and another on the so-called independent state legislature theory. On Thursday, the ModCom will hold a hearing on innovative approaches to fixing Congress. There are also a bunch of red meat hearings.

Last week. The House passed the minibus package of six appropriations bills, but Majority Leader Hoyer told BGov it’s unlikely the other three (CJS, Labor-HHS-Education, and State and Foreign Operations) originally slated to go before recess will be brought to a vote, and of course there’s three more not yet on the docket. Steve Bannon was found guilty of contempt of Congress, but how we got here highlights problems with how the contempt process works. And ICYMI the ModCom favorably reported 29 new recommendations. More on contempt and ModCom below.

Building digital capacity in Congress. The recently-launched House Digital Service pilot presents an excellent opportunity to streamline and institutionalize congressional tech improvements. The Lincoln Network has a new report out with recommendations for strengthening the HDS. The authors advocate securing strong funding for the program; ensuring oversight over HDS; creating pathways for interacting with civil society; broadening HDS’s mandate; and more.

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First Branch Forecast for June 27, 2022: Apropos everything

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What to expect from Congress this week? The House is holding a committee work week before joining the Senate, which is already out on recess. They will return the week of July 11th. We are writing this newsletter before 5pm on Friday, so you’ll have to check the House committee calendar for upcoming hearings, but we know the upcoming week is filled with Approps bills markups. By the end of the week, the appropriations committee process will be complete on the House side — phew — at least until there’s an agreement on the top line numbers, and we can expect the bills to move on the floor soon. The Senate approps timeline is more difficult to divine, but given that the deadlines for public witness testimony wrap up July 1, we could start seeing subcommittee markup notices in July. Or Senate Dems will simply release their draft bills prior to summer recess while leaders negotiate over the top line numbers. Stay tuned.

We’re not going to address the big news out of the Supreme Court on abortion and guns, or what’s happening with the NDAA, or the gun control law, the January 6th stuff, and most of the items that came out of the appropriations process. It’s simply too much for us to manage, but you can expect some of these items — to the extent they fit within this newsletter’s mission — coming up in the upcoming weeks.

Last week saw several big wins for strengthening the Leg branch. On Tuesday, a host of excellent congressional data modernization improvements were announced at the quarterly meeting of the entity formerly known as the Bulk Data Task Force; significant improvements in funding and operations for the Legislative branch were favorably reported by the full House Appropriations committee; and a significant increase in the wage available to interns was promulgated by the House Admin Committee. The House Defense Approps bill contains language to sunset the two AUMFs from 2001 and 2002 that have been abused ever since. We’ve got more below, along with summaries of two hearings that helped define what still needs to be done to modernize Congress: a House ModCom hearing on Congress and Technology and the Senate’s Leg Branch Approps hearing on the GAO & GPO.

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Leg Branch Line Items FY 21-23

As Congress considering appropriations levels for the Legislative branch for FY2023, we thought it would be useful to compare line items inside the Legislative Branch bill. Below contains the actual funding levels for FY21 and FY 22, the requests published in the president budget, the appropriations levels supported by the subcommittee and full committee as they come out, and a comparison of how those levels have changed.

FY23 Appropriations Bill Text Tracking

It can be, at times, somewhat difficult to track appropriations bill text, report language, and press releases and the legislation goes through its paces. Congress.gov maintains a thorough appropriations page, but as of the time of this writing it still has not been updated for FY2023. It’s UI could also be improved.

So we are trying an experiment and will see if we can track the bills as they go through their paces — at least the initial paces. Accordingly, find below our FY 2023 appropriations bill text, report, and press release tracking spreadsheet. Let us know what you think.

First Branch Forecast for May 9, 2022: Union means together

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Welcome back. The Senate is in today; the House is back tomorrow. On the House floor, a resolution to allow House staff to unionize will be brought to a vote later this week. Senate Leg branch approps has started its hearings, with the Architect, CBO, and Senate SAA on Wednesday; House FSGG approps will hear from the federal judiciary on Thursday and hold a member day hearing on Friday.

TREATING STAFF LIKE PEOPLE

Overview. This week had a ton of good news for Congressional staff. A vote is set to adopt Rep. Levin’s resolution that would afford many House political and non-political staff the opportunity to organize into a union. Speaker Pelosi issued a pay order that will require, by September 1, that all House staff be paid no less than $45,000 annually. And Speaker Pelosi increased the maximum pay a staffer can earn to $203,700, from $199,300, an amount identical to the top rate for Senate staff. The minimum pay levels and pay order enjoys strong bipartisan support, and rightly so. Last week Reps. Hoyer and Jeffries sent an excellent letter calling for COLAs for political offices and a wide range of improved staff benefits. And, lest we forget, the House Modernization Committee has advanced scores of recommendations to improve legislative operations. This House is on track to improve the working conditions for its staff in the 117th Congress more than Congress has over the last three decades combined.

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Statement on House Unionization Vote + Establishment of Minimum Wage

“Today is a proud moment in congressional history and portends a significant advance in the working conditions for congressional staff,” said Daniel Schuman, policy director of Demand Progress, a non-governmental organization focused on strengthening our democracy that has led a broad coalition to advocate for the right of congressional staff to unionize and pushed for higher staff pay.

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