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September 22, 2023
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PRESENTED BY
THE TOP
Happy Friday morning.
What is that sound you hear? Is it the rustling leaves of the early fall? Is it your kids enjoying D.C.’s temperate weather after the scorching summer?
No, Washington. It’s the sound of the House about to get jammed by the Senate. And even then it’s probably too late to prevent a government shutdown.
House Republicans were cycling between Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Majority Whip Tom Emmer’s offices Thursday, planning out their quixotic quest to pass 11 appropriations bills in the next nine days. Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer teed up a bill that could become the vehicle for a bipartisan stopgap funding package designed to keep government open past Sept. 30.
While House Republicans are pointlessly grinding through their version of FY2024 spending bills next week, Schumer and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell will likely send the House a bipartisan CR. And yes, it’ll probably include billions of dollars in Ukraine aid as well as disaster relief funding and plenty of provisions that conservatives abhor.
At that point, McCarthy will have a choice to make. Will he bring up the Senate-approved CR and pass it with a mix of Democratic and Republican votes? Will he try to amend it and see if the Senate will bite? (They probably won’t.) Or will he ignore it and shut the government down?
This is a decision that could define McCarthy’s speakership.
It didn’t have to be this way: If House Republicans passed their own CR with border security funding, they would’ve forced a debate with the Senate about the growing migrant crisis in Texas, Arizona and elsewhere around the country — a major political weakness for the Biden administration. And maybe could’ve scored some other policy wins.
But instead, McCarthy’s House Republican Conference rebelled against him, forcing the speaker and his leadership team into a prolonged debate about topline spending for next year. This undercut McCarthy’s preferred message and further weakened his already weak hand with the Senate and the White House.
Some moderate Republicans are also getting annoyed at the influence the right flank is having on the rest of the conference. Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), who helped craft a bipartisan stopgap proposal with the Problem Solvers Caucus, said McCarthy needs to start working with Democrats.
Bacon took a shot at the House Freedom Caucus, which he referred to as the “dysfunction caucus.”
“Let’s stop chasing our tail with these five to 10 members who are making demands that will never become law,” Bacon told us. “Let’s start working across the aisle and get the best deal we can.”
What’s next: The House Rules Committee has scheduled a markup this afternoon on four spending bills – Homeland Security, State-Foreign Operations, Defense and Agriculture.
This is part of the House GOP leadership’s latest plan to pass 11 appropriations bills through the chamber at $1.52 trillion in total spending, which is tens of billions of dollars lower than what the Senate will accept. Members are still not expected to return to Washington until Tuesday evening, according to GOP leadership aides.
Yet in many ways, a Senate-led process may have always been the inevitable outcome here. Any bill to fund the government must, by definition, be bipartisan, and McCarthy has been unwilling to put a bipartisan funding bill on the floor in order to avoid an open war with his hardline conservatives.
Senate GOP appropriators were largely staying quiet in order to give McCarthy the space to figure out his own internal dynamics. Senate Republicans didn’t want to undermine him. But they were agitating for something — anything — to come out of the House this week.
That isn’t going to happen, so the Senate will take an initial procedural vote Tuesday evening on the House’s FAA reauthorization bill, which will eventually be subbed out for the CR.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has already said he won’t give consent for speedy passage of a bill that includes Ukraine aid. So the Senate will need to burn through a ton of floor time unless there’s some kind of time agreement reached.
When the House and Senate returns on Tuesday, lawmakers will have just five days left to avoid a shutdown.
There’s a lot at stake for hundreds of thousands of federal employees – including military service members – who won’t get paid during a shutdown. We expect OMB to begin communicating with senior officials at federal agencies starting today to remind them to update their shutdown guidance for employees with the deadline just over a week away.
One more thing: We want to give a shoutout to CNN’s Manu Raju, our longtime friend and colleague. Manu is formally taking over as anchor of “Inside Politics Sunday” this weekend. Be sure to tune in.
— Jake Sherman, Andrew Desiderio, Mica Soellner and John Bresnahan
WASHINGTON X THE WORLD
What Zelensky told us
We had the opportunity to sit down with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday night with a very small group of reporters and editors in D.C.
It was quite the experience – especially since it came after Zelensky was on Capitol Hill meeting with key figures in our core audience, including dozens of senators and Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
Of course, Ukraine funding is one of the most contentious issues before Congress right now.
The tens of billions of dollars in military, economic and humanitarian aid that’s flowed from Washington to Kyiv is in danger of stopping. Case in point – House Republicans may be forced to strip Ukraine money from their version of the FY2024 Defense spending bill in order to get it through the chamber.
For his part, McCarthy signaled that he had a good meeting with Zelensky Thursday. We asked Zelensky for his view on their interaction.
“[McCarthy] said that they will be on our side — it’s not simple — that they will support” Ukraine, Zelensky said.
Here are some more highlights from our talk with Zelensky.
No. 1: Zelensky said Ukrainian forces will retake Bakhmut and two other unnamed cities from the Russians. He also said Ukraine will continue to fight through the winter months, when military operations become much more difficult. Here’s more:
Zelensky’s confidence that he understands Putin was striking to us.
No. 2: Zelensky is hopeful he’ll get the long-range missiles from the United States that he says Ukraine needs to combat the Russians.
“We have to. I think yes,” Zelensky said. “Because we don’t have another way out.”
No. 3: Zelensky said he had a very positive meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Read between the lines there. Ukraine’s relationship with Israel is slightly complicated by the fact that Israel has close ties to Russia. What Zelensky seems to be saying is that you cannot have a strong relationship with Russia and be an enemy of Iran. Iran is supplying Russian forces with drones and other weapons that are being used against Ukraine.
— Jake Sherman
Brown opens the door to credit card reform
The chair of the Senate Banking Committee isn’t ruling out legislative action to reform credit card markets, a potentially significant blow to the financial sector.
We asked Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) Thursday about the Credit Card Competition Act, a bill that would restructure credit card markets by requiring issuers to offer a choice of at least two payment companies in electronic transactions. Banks are fiercely opposed to the bill even getting a vote, let alone being enacted.
Brown started by saying his top priority continues to be passage of bank executive accountability legislation he co-authored with Sen. Tim Scott (S.C.), his GOP counterpart on Banking. The committee advanced the RECOUP Act earlier this summer with nearly unanimous bipartisan support.
But after that bill gets taken up by the full Senate, the Ohio Democrat said he’d be open to a bipartisan conversation about credit cards.
“Once that’s on the floor, I’m willing to try the same process on this,” Brown said. “I don’t know if it’s possible.”
The banking industry has more than a few things to worry about in Washington these days. But even as a legislative longshot, the credit card bill – sponsored by Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Roger Marshall (R-Kansas), Peter Welch (D-Vt.) and J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) – is viewed as one of the sector’s most serious threats. Credit card fees are a major profit source for many banks, thanks in part to the dominance of Mastercard and Visa in the payments sector.
Industry angst over these reforms has surged over the past week. As we wrote Wednesday morning, Marshall had been pushing for his bill to get a floor vote in exchange for unanimous consent on the Senate’s $280 billion spending minibus.
So getting buy-in from Brown to begin even initial negotiations over reforms would be a major victory for the retailer lobby. Advocates have long argued that the fees merchants pay for credit card payments are exorbitant. It’s also worth noting that when Durbin introduced the latest version of the bill, it was referred to the Banking Committee.
Here’s more from Brown:
Brown also said that “the banks have way too much power. There’s no question about that.”
We followed up on that, trying to clarify whether Brown was talking about the credit card market.
Brown replied: “Well, everything.”
– Brendan Pedersen
PRESENTED BY CHEVRON
At Chevron, we’re producing renewable fuels to help reduce the lifecycle carbon intensity of the transportation industry.
Punchbowl News HQ debut at CBCF ALC
In honor of CBCF ALC week, we launched our first ever Punchbowl News HQ. Members of our team and the Congressional Black Caucus communities came together Thursday for thoughtful conversations on health equity, networking, music and food.
We were joined by speakers and experts in the health equity space. They included Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.); Tesheia Johnson, deputy director of clinical research at Yale School of Medicine; Dr. Priscilla Pemu, associate dean for clinical research at Morehouse School of Medicine; Stephanie Dyson, vice president, U.S. policy & government affairs at Bristol Myers Squibb; Gary Puckrein, president and CEO of the National Minority Quality Forum; and Eric Gascho, senior vice president, policy and government affairs at the National Health Council.
A special thank you to PhRMA, who made the entire day possible.
We concluded the day with a “Toast to the Women of the CBC” in partnership with GlobalWIN. Tiffany Moore, GlobalWIN board chair, and Keenan Austin Reed, GlobalWIN advisory council chair, also gave remarks.
If you missed these in-person conversations at Punchbowl News HQ yesterday, click the links below to watch the full recordings.
A conversation with Blunt Rochester.
A fireside chat on clinical trial diversity with Johnson and Pemu.
An expert panel on the state of health care one year after the Inflation Reduction Act with Dyson, Puckrein and Gascho.
THE CAMPAIGN
Senate Democrats are facing a tough map in 2024. The party is far more concerned with protecting vulnerable incumbents than going on offense. But despite the long odds, Democrats are hoping they can flip the seats of two politicians that rile up the progressive base –Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rick Scott (R-Fla.).
The DSCC is running a new digital ad campaign targeting Google searches for Cruz, Scott and government shutdowns in Texas and Florida. The ads will argue the senators are angling for a shutdown that will threaten Social Security. Check them out here.
Of course, the real shutdown threat is originating in the House.
Over in Florida, former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (D-Fla.) is out with her first Spanish-language ad in her bid to unseat Scott. Mucarsel-Powell highlights her personal story as an immigrant who came to the United States searching for a better life.
Much has been made of the Democratic slippage among Latino voters in the state. Efforts like this from Mucarsel-Powell, who has also sought to engage with numerous Spanish-language media outlets, are a bid to ameliorate that slide.
Pennsylvania: Dave McCormick officially entered the Senate race on Thursday to take on Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.). McCormick was immediately endorsed by all Republican members of the Pennsylvania House delegation, something that didn’t happen in 2022.
— Max Cohen
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