TOP LINE
Congress returns from the July 4th holiday and dives into a three-week sprint of work before the longer August recess. Appropriations bills remain the focus, with the Senate set to markup the Leg. Branch, CJS, and FSGG bills on Thursday. Look out for the proposed text perhaps the day before.
The NDAA is slated to hit the House floor this week. As usual, the bill will swell with amendments that couldn’t pass as stand-alone legislation because of the procedural sluice gates of leadership control and the filibuster. It’s a great way to run a country. This year is a bit more complex as social conservatives have drafted a number of amendments affecting military policy on topics like DEI training, abortion restrictions, and transgender service members’ access to healthcare and facilities, sticking Speaker Kevin McCarthy back between the vice of what he’s promised the House’s far right and what the Senate will pass.
Six FY 2024 funding bills have passed the full House Appropriations Committee so far. Four are yet to be introduced. Minority committee staff have pulled together this very helpful update on their status. We’re keeping a bit more detailed record of progress here. The House has a mere three weeks to complete this process before the August recess and is still $119 billion apart from the Senate’s total allocation, leading some in the majority to talk of a short CR to avoid a government shutdown.
Staff diversity writ large is a major issue for this appropriations season, as the House majority plans to fold the Office of Diversity and Inclusion into CAO. As we explore below, although this is preferable to getting rid of it entirely, it’s not clear how core functions of ODI will be retained in the reorganization.
This week the Senate is in session all five days while the House takes an extra day of recess Monday.
SURVIVING JULY
A tremendous amount of work remains to be done before the start of the August recess, after which the appropriations process enters the danger zone of the end of the fiscal year. The four bills that remain to be introduced in the House are usually high-touch affairs, like T-HUD and Labor-HHS. Also to be introduced is funding for the Justice Department, which the MAGA faction has indicated it will be preparing retaliatory strikes for the indictments of Donald Trump. (We still hope the bill will be used for appropriate executive branch accountability measures.)
The promise of open floor amendments from Speaker McCarthy still stands, and the far right faction that extracted it intends to hold him to it. The Senate will have its own vote counting to do when bills potentially ping-pong over if Republicans hold together.
Congressional leaders also intend to move forward with FAA reauthorization and the farm bill on top of the NDAA and appropriations packages during July. With the GOP united in negative agenda setting, particularly on food security programs, there’s not a policy goal here beyond how low can you go. Right now, this process is still being driven by the maximalist faction of the GOP coalition. McCarthy just hopes to survive, but they can precipitate a floor strike at any moment as they did immediately after the debt limit deal.
The contours of this summer’s factional battle are becoming evident off the floor. In late July, Freedom Works will release a hagiographic look back at the speakership fight with a documentary featuring interviews with the leaders of the McCarthy hostage takers. It will attempt to set that faction as the conservative standard.
Meanwhile, the House Freedom Caucus ejected Marjorie Taylor Greene this week, nominally for calling Rep. Lauren Boebert a mean word but really because she has allied with McCarthy, part of his (or perhaps her?) divide-and-conquer strategy. The move will get hoots from the audience, but traditional Republicans still are not on the playing field.
DIVERSITY AND CONGRESSIONAL FUNDING
Intern pay stability
Pay Our Interns, Demand Progress, and a coalition of other organizations requested Senate appropriators include at least $7 million for committees for intern compensation. The House provides transparency and certainty through such a pool available to its committees. In its absence, our colleague Taylor Swift explains, Senate committees themselves carve pay for interns out of existing budgets, which may run out and leave interns in the lurch. Intern and staff pay should not be in competition. This uncertainty affects Senate offices’ ability to attract talent that cannot work for free, undermining the diversity of entry-level staff.
Continue reading “First Branch Forecast for July 10, 2023: The Pre-Recess Sprint”