The Archive

THE TOP

Happy Monday morning.

The House is in session today, the Senate returns tomorrow. President Joe Biden will host British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at the White House on Thursday. On Friday, Biden heads to the newly renamed Fort Liberty (it was Fort Bragg) in North Carolina.

On Capitol Hill, the end of the months-long debt-limit fight means a potentially catastrophic default isn’t in the cards until mid-2025 at the earliest.

Yet that doesn’t mean the budget drama is over for Washington, or that the bipartisanship of last week is something that will last. It isn’t, and it won’t.

Congressional leaders have pledged to finish the 12 annual spending bills in regular order this year for the first time in decades. That will take some cooperation, especially in the Senate. With only six weeks in session before the August break, it’s going to be a busy couple months.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy — undeniably stronger now than he was before the debt-limit showdown — will have to deal with serious unhappiness on his right flank. McCarthy and his allies are confident that they can beat any attempt by the House Freedom Caucus or conservative critics to use a motion to vacate to unseat him.

Yet conservatives can cause real problems for McCarthy over a budget resolution or appropriations bills. They’re fundraising against their own leadership’s failure to cut spending back to FY2022 levels. They’re angry that McCarthy relied on Democrats to pass the rule for the Fiscal Responsibility Act. And they’ll seek to blow something up soon.

House Republicans also will continue to press their investigations into Biden, his family and the broader administration (more on this below). Look for pressure to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to pick up. Attorney General Merrick Garland could also come under more scrutiny. McCarthy and the GOP leadership may see this as a safety valve of sorts — let rank-and-file House Republicans press ahead on this front in order to deflect some of the anger aimed at the speaker.

House GOP leaders will continue to push “culture war” issues, too, as Biden gears up for his 2024 reelection run.

Just this week, the House will vote on H.R. 1640, the Save Our Gas Stoves Act, as well as H.R. 1615, the Gas Stove Protection and Freedom Act. Other Republican-drafted bills up for a vote include the REINS Act — to cut down on federal regulations — and the Separation of Powers Restoration Act, which is designed to change how much weight federal judges give to executive-branch actions during lawsuits.

While none of these bills will go anywhere in a Democratic-run Senate, they’re all touchstones for the GOP base. Conservative activists are challenging the influence of federal regulators as they try to overturn the 1984 Chevron case via the Supreme Court. This would be a major blow to Biden’s climate agenda.

But the expected struggle over a Ukraine-focused Pentagon supplemental package — we previewed this on Friday — will likely be the biggest clash of the fall.

There’s a sizable group of GOP lawmakers who want to scale back or end such funding — including the leading Republican presidential candidates — so this will be a major flashpoint. Ukrainian forces are expected to launch a counteroffensive soon, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is already expressing concern about what will happen after the 2024 election.

With non-defense discretionary spending essentially frozen — and conservatives looking for a pound of flesh after McCarthy turned to Democrats to win a key procedural vote on the Fiscal Responsibility Act — there’ll be numerous sharp policy disputes as appropriators try to put together the FY2024 bills. Abortion, climate change, diversity and critical race theory, guns, border security, Covid, the FBI and “weaponizing government” will all be controversies that lawmakers have to wade through.

But the fate of Julie Su, Biden’s nominee for Labor secretary, will be a more immediate concern for the White House and Senate Democrats.

Su’s nomination has been hung up in the Senate for weeks in the face of united Republican opposition. Three moderates — Democrats Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Jon Tester (Mont.), as well as Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) — are undecided. Su’s fate rests with these three.

Sinema, in particular, is seen as the key vote by union insiders. The AFL-CIO and other labor unions will restart a TV ad campaign in Arizona and nationally supporting Su.

However, there isn’t expected to be any action on Su’s nomination this week on the Senate floor. The delay will undoubtedly again raise questions about whether Su can be confirmed.

In the meantime, Su is continuing to run the Labor Department in an acting role. And the Senate will be focused on other nominations — both judicial and executive — during this abbreviated Tuesday-to-Thursday week.

One nomination to watch — Dilawar Syed for deputy administrator of the Small Business Administration. Syed was blocked in committee by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and other Republicans during the last Congress over his ties to an anti-Israel group, as well as other unrelated issues. Biden renominated him this year, and the Small Business Committee approved his nomination. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has filed cloture on the nomination, although the New York Democrat hasn’t scheduled a vote yet.

Also: Sunak is scheduled to be at the Capitol on Thursday, where he’ll meet with Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. This will be another opportunity for defense hawks to make their case for more Ukraine funding.

— John Bresnahan and Andrew Desiderio