Forecast for June 8, 2020

THE TOP LINE

Police reform takes center stage. Widespread outrage over the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, combined with dozens of videos of police attacking non-violent demonstrators, the use of unidentified internal security forces to police DC streets, and more than 140 police attacks on the press have elevated public pressure on Congress to address systemic police misconduct. This may prompt the House to restart its floor proceedings sooner than planned, possible with police reform legislation.

Majority Leader Hoyer updated the House calendar last week in a very unusual way. Every weekday in June is a committee work day, with no floor votes expected except for June 30-July 2, followed by another two weeks of committee work days, and another two weeks of floor votes. Unusually, the House will be conducting business M-F — it usually only holds meetings in DC from Tue.-Thurs. — which means the House will have more days to get work done and, if members do not fly in-and-out, more meaningful time to work and a more efficient work schedule. This will be an interesting experiment; you might recall that fixing the House’s calendar was one of the priorities of the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress.

Appropriations and NDAA markups scheduled. On Thursday, Approps Chair Lowey indicated approps markups will be held the weeks of July 6 and 13, with the expectation that bills could be on the floor the weeks of July 20 and 27. Meanwhile, the HASC scheduled the FY21 NDAA to begin on July 1, with subcommittee markups starting June 22. The Senate begins mark ups for the NDAA today. Your guess is as good as ours about whether and how the hundreds of NDAA amendments will be considered on the floor.

The first bill to be enacted by proxy voting was signed by Trump. On Friday, the president signed the latest PPP reform bill into law, even though many House members voted by proxy when the measure passed the House two weeks ago. What does this mean for the Republican lawsuit against proxy voting?

FISA legislation still in limbo. This bill is a great illustration of how Democratic and Republican leadership join together and use their positions and informational advantage to put one over on the rank and file. Reauthorization of surveillance legislation — the USA FREEDOM Reauthorization Act — remains in limbo after House Democratic and Republican leadership maneuvered the House to request a conference committee when it became clear that Republicans had joined with progressives on the bill’s substance and would succeed in killing the bill after leadership stripped out one very popular pro-civil liberties amendment (Lee-Leahy) and stymied consideration of another (Daines-Wyden). House leadership had previously prevented amendments in committee and on the floor, but the Senate passed a stronger version of the bill after civil libertarians sustained a filibuster and got concessions. The bill was moving forward until it became apparent that security hawks had added trojan horse language to the House version of the Daines-Wyden amendment, which would have inverted its effect. The House has named its conference committee members, but the Senate has yet to agree to conference.

The US Capitol Police and transparency is the subject of a letter we released this morning.

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Forecast for May 26, 2020

THE TOP LINE

The Senate is out for Memorial Day recess; the House will be in for votes tomorrow and Thursday. (Yes, today is Tuesday. Welcome back.)

Speaker Pelosi triggered a 45-day emergency period for remote committee and floor deliberations on May 20th; we calculate the end-date as July 4th, unless it is extended. Members can opt to vote by proxy or in person; proxy designations are here. Hopefully the House will quickly move to remote floor voting; we’re tracking everything here. Cheers to retiring Rep. Rooney for endorsing remote deliberations.

The House will vote on the domestic-surveillance bill known as the USA Freedom Reauthorization Act, with leadership reportedly agreeing late on Friday to allow consideration of an amendment to require the FBI obtain a warrant prior to searching an American’s Internet search and browser histories. This is an interesting instance where rank-and-file pressure re-opened a bill that leadership had previously jammed through without a markup or amendments.

Senator McConnell is attacking the House for proxy voting, suggesting (at least in POLITICO’s summary) that he wouldn’t take up House bills enacted this way. Given that the Senate wasn’t taking up House bills anyway; that the Senate is in recess while the House is at work; that some senators stand accused of violating the STOCK Act; that appropriations bills originate in the House; and the pace of Senate public-facing activity has slowed to a crawl; this seems more like an effort at distraction than a serious charge; perhaps he should focus on the Senate.

House Dems intro’d a bill to protect Inspectors General from arbitrary removal, with some prominent Democratic sponsors. The Project on Government Oversight’s Executive Dir. explained why protecting IGs is important (and what else should be done) in this op-ed. WaPo takes a look at Sen. Grassley, who historically has defended IGs, and POLITICO describes how unitary executive theory — the extreme political view that the president controls everyone in the executive branch — is being used to undermine IG independence.

We’ve added new international resources to our twitterbot @OpenAtAGlance, which tweets primary sources on legislative operations + actions.

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Forecast for May 18, 2020

What a week. On Friday, the House adopted a remote voting resolution (H. Res. 965) that provides for proxy voting on the floor, remote committee hearings, and creates a pathway for remote voting on the floor and remote mark-ups in committees. In other words, the House can function for the foreseeable future despite the COVID-19 pandemic, creating the possibility of a legislative check on the executive branch. The Senate, meanwhile, continues to play Russian roulette with its members, staff, and the ability of that chamber to function.

Just a few months ago, Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader McConnell spoke out in opposition to remote deliberations, and Minority Leader McCarthy denounced it from the House floor. It is unusual, to say the least, for a rules change to pass over the opposition of the leaders of both parties in the House, but intense political pressure and the political reality prompted Speaker Pelosi to do a 180, and she put her own stamp on the rule to protect (and possibly aggrandize) her power vis-a-vis the rank-and-file. (Full disclosure: we support remote voting.) The final vote was partisan, but I suspect many House Republicans welcome the move to keep the House functioning even if they wish it had come about differently.

When the House comes back on May 27th, it will vote on a surveillance reauthorization bill, which will be the first major legislation voted by proxy in the House. What’s notable about the Orwellian-named “USA Freedom Reauthorization Act” is (1) the underlying law stayed lapsed in part because of no remote deliberations; (2) the bill was recently amended in the Senate to allow outside experts to weigh in on FBI surveillance requests, and (3) that an amendment failed 59-37 to prohibit the government from warrantlessly-surveilling your website browsing information and search history, but two of the absent Senators would have voted for it had, say, remote voting been in place. Will Speaker Pelosi — who is a hard-liner for national security issues trumping civil liberties — allow the House to consider a pro civil-liberties amendment that has 60+ votes in the Senate? If she does not, what mechanisms are available to House members in a proxy-voting environment to force a vote on that amendment? How do the new processes affect their leverage?

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