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November 27, 2023
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PRESENTED BY
THE TOP
Happy Monday morning.
The House and Senate are back in session this week, kicking off a December sprint until Christmas and the New Year’s holiday.
For the first time in years, there won’t be a year-end government funding showdown this month. That will come in mid-January. It’s a Christmas miracle!
Instead, over the next few weeks, congressional leaders will focus on Israel, Ukraine, the annual defense authorization bill, FISA and other issues. These are some very difficult topics with no guarantee that lawmakers will find consensus.
But first, let’s talk about the one thing most members seem to agree on – the looming House expulsion vote on Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.). We expect this vote could happen as early as Wednesday. But the GOP leadership insists no final decisions have been made yet on timing.
The House hasn’t expelled one of its own members in more than 20 years. And there have only been five expulsions in the entire history of the institution. This is a big deal, to put it mildly.
Republicans hold only a four-seat edge. Giving away one of those seats — which Democrats are likely to recapture in a special election — is a concern for many Republicans. Celeste Maloy, the former House GOP staffer who won the Utah 2nd District special election, will be sworn in this week, temporarily giving Republicans 222 members (and bringing the House back to its full 435 members).
Yet the weight of evidence against the criminally indicted Santos is overwhelming, as the House Ethics Committee noted recently in its report on the freshman lawmaker.
And Rep. Michael Guest (R-Miss.), the Ethics Committee chair, is the one who introduced the expulsion resolution, giving it even more heft.
Guest didn’t file this resolution as privileged, however. A member has to go to the floor and raise the issue of privilege — a key procedural step — to trigger a vote this week.
Santos held a press conference on the social media site X on Friday. We’re not getting into all of his inanity except to note that Santos said he isn’t resigning. Yet even Santos is aware that the outlook is poor for him.
The supplemental: The next few weeks are make or break for President Joe Biden’s push for tens of billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine, Israel and Indo-Pacific allies. The Senate is taking the lead here. Everything will come down to whether senators can strike a deal on changes to asylum policies and border-security measures to address the migrant crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border.
That needs to happen this week if there’s any chance of action before January, so Democratic leaders are starting the clock on this high-stakes showdown. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer released a letter to senators Sunday saying he’ll put Biden’s supplemental request on the Senate floor as soon as next week.
Several senators told their foreign counterparts last week that it’ll be impossible to pass more foreign aid if these talks stretch past December. And a top House Republican predicted Sunday that Congress won’t act on the supplemental until January, which ties it once again to government funding. This has all the makings of a big problem for the White House.
Schumer slammed Senate Republicans for conditioning the aid package on a border fix but said Democrats “stand ready to work on common-sense solutions.” Schumer reiterated that “hard-right” demands on border and immigration policy in return for Ukraine aid will jeopardize the entire package.
The Senate’s bipartisan border group is planning on meeting when they return to the Capitol today. Republicans are holding firm on their insistence that changes to both asylum and parole policies need to be attached to any aid package.
Democrats are preparing for the likelihood that they’ll have to accept significant border policy changes. Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), a staunch progressive, told us that it’s “not sustainable” for Democrats to maintain the status quo at the border.
Democrats will also have to grapple with a widening rift in their party over Biden’s handling of Israel’s military campaign against Hamas in Gaza. The White House has played up Biden’s role in the recent hostage exchange and ceasefire, yet some Democrats are openly calling for restrictions on aid to Israel due to high Palestinian civilian casualties.
Meanwhile, aid to Israel is stalled in the House because Speaker Mike Johnson tied the funding to IRS spending cuts that the Democratic-run Senate and White House oppose.
Tuberville rules resolution: The Senate is also aiming to resolve the months-long standoff over Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s (R-Ala.) blockade of nearly 400 military promotions. The Rules Committee passed a resolution allowing most of the promotions to be voted on at the same time, but it lacks requisite GOP support. Schumer said he plans to bring the resolution to the floor “in the coming weeks” with the goal of approving the long-stalled promotions by year’s end.
NDAA: Senate GOP hawks secured a conference committee for the defense authorization bill as part of an agreement to pass the laddered CR before Thanksgiving.
We’re told that the formal NDAA conference will be held this week, and the compromise bill could be filed as soon as next week.
FISA: Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and other provisions expire at the end of the year. That section permits U.S. intelligence agencies to conduct warrantless surveillance on non-American citizens who are outside the United States. But both conservative and progressive lawmakers are concerned about U.S. citizens caught up in these probes and have called for even more safeguards. There will be extensive action on this issue during the next few weeks.
— John Bresnahan, Andrew Desiderio and Jake Sherman
GOVERNMENT FUNDING
Congress looks elsewhere as spending clock ticks
If you want a sense of where things are headed with the FY2024 spending bills, just look at the House and Senate floors this week.
In the House, senior GOP leadership aides tell us that there’s no expected floor action on appropriations bills. If you recall, the House has struggled mightily with the appropriations process during the last few weeks. Speaker Mike Johnson and Republicans had to yank a few spending bills because of serious — and perhaps intractable — disagreements within the party. The House Republican leadership was hoping that the November break would cool things down. Stay tuned on that front.
Across the Capitol, the Senate is going to vote on several judicial nominations, then shift to consideration of President Joe Biden’s massive foreign aid supplemental package for Israel, Ukraine and other countries, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has announced (see above).
But the government-funding clock is ticking. In 53 days, funding runs out for Agriculture, FDA, Energy and Water, Military Construction-Veterans Affairs and Transportation and Housing and Urban Development spending bills. The rest of the government runs out of money on Feb. 2.
The House and Senate still need to come up with a topline spending number. Any compromise is almost certain to leave out the deep spending cuts and culture war provisions that the House Republicans have insisted upon. So we don’t entirely know how the Senate and the House will find a deal. And Johnson has firmly ruled out any more short-term spending fixes.
Congress has avoided government shutdowns this year. But the Jan. 19 deadline will be here fast if lawmakers stick to their currently planned schedules for both chambers. Just because there’s no crisis this month, January could still get ugly.
— Jake Sherman and John Bresnahan
THE SPEAKER
Johnson in Florida for cash and official event with Buchanan
Speaker Mike Johnson will be in Sarasota, Fla., today for a tour of the airport and a fundraiser with Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.), a wealthy member of the House Ways and Means Committee.
A few things to note: Johnson and Buchanan are touring the Sarasota Bradenton International Airport. They will receive an “update on the airport’s new terminal expansion project. The $100M project includes a 5-gate terminal, covering 75,300 sq ft. The new facility will also include a 4-lane security checkpoint and 5 boarding hold rooms with 970 seats,” according to Buchanan’s office.
Some of this funding is from the $1-trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill, which Johnson and Buchanan both voted against.
Secondly, Johnson is raising money for his victory committee at Buchanan’s Longboat Key home. Here’s the invite.
Buchanan’s house is a frequent stop for top members of leadership. For $25,000 to the Johnson Leadership Fund, you can have dinner with the speaker and Buchanan. But you can get in the door for $1,000.
The Johnson Leadership Fund funnels money to the speaker’s reelection committee, a leadership PAC called American Revival PAC and the NRCC.
— Jake Sherman
Most lawmakers support combining Ukraine, Israel aid with border security
As the war in the Middle East continues, most senior staffers on Capitol Hill (77%) say their boss would support a bill that combined Ukraine, Israel and border security funding. That is according to our survey, The Canvass Capitol Hill.
The survey — conducted Nov. 1-19 in partnership with LSG — found there’s a big party-line divide here. Nearly all Democratic staffers (97%) and 59% of Republican staffers said the lawmaker they work for would support a joint package. Some senators have warned U.S allies that Ukraine aid could be contingent on Congress addressing border security.
Democrats say they don’t want to make major immigration changes as part of the supplemental, but they’ve also acknowledged they’ll have to make some concessions to clear the 60-vote threshold.
Meanwhile, most Hill staffers (86%) said they were concerned about the potential for the Israel-Hamas war to expand into a broader regional conflict. The war has claimed more than 15,000 lives since it started on Oct. 7. A four-day ceasefire could end later today after Hamas turned over 58 hostages in exchange for the release of 117 Palestinian prisoners.
Want to take part in The Canvass? Our survey provides anonymous monthly insights from top Capitol Hill staffers and K Street leaders on key issues facing Washington. Sign up here if you work on K Street. Click here to sign up if you’re a senior congressional staffer.
— Robert O’Shaughnessy
📅
What we’re watching
Tuesday: The Senate Finance Committee will hold a hearing on former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley’s nomination to be the commissioner of Social Security. The House Rules Committee will meet to prepare three bills for the House floor.
Wednesday: The House Financial Services Committee will have a hearing with CFPB Chair Rohit Chopra. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will also hold a hearing on the security of federal facilities.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will get a closed briefing from Biden administration officials on the U.S.-China relationship after APEC.
Thursday: The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing during which they’re expected to vote on a subpoena in their Supreme Court ethics investigation. The Senate Banking Committee will also hear from Chopra.
— Jake Sherman
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Punchbowl News Presents
By transforming bill tracking and floor action with expert analysis from the Punchbowl News team, The Portal delivers concise, curated insights that cut through the noise, helping policy leaders win. Request a demo today.