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Jet fumes swamp Capitol Hill

GOP hawks wince at new Trump-Zelensky spat

‘This is a crisis’: Senate Foreign Relations Committee falls back into chaos

ICYMI: Shaheen, Scott on small business, tax reform and more

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Jet fumes swamp Capitol Hill

Happy Wednesday morning.

Hey Congress! Take a good look at your fellow members and senators today. You’re not going to see them again until after Election Day.

The House is scheduled to take up a three-month continuing resolution that will keep federal agencies open through Dec. 20. That vote — which will be held under suspension, meaning a two-thirds majority is needed to pass — will take place this evening. It’s going to pass, of course. The biggest question here is whether a majority of the 220 House Republicans vote for the measure.

Then Tuesday night, Senate leaders locked in a time agreement that gives the chamber two hours to consider the CR once it formally receives the bill from the House.

This all means Congress will be gone after today until mid-November.

It’s a little earlier than normal — about a week — if you go back and look at when previous Congresses passed a CR that allowed lawmakers to head back home to run for reelection.

Yet the thing about this Congress is that it hasn’t done anything for months anyway. You want numbers? We got ‘em.

Let’s go back to the July 4th recess as a starting point, for instance. Since the last week of June — when Congress actually left for the holiday — the House has been in session and voted only on 19 days. A bunch of those were fly-in days too, so nothing really substantive was voted on then. That means lawmakers were in town for less than 20% of a three-month period.

The Senate’s record is marginally better. Senate Democrats will argue they spent the summer confirming President Joe Biden’s judicial nominations to lifetime appointments. This is a very important issue, no question about it. But the Senate wasn’t covering itself in glory either.

Most importantly, both chambers failed miserably in making progress on the FY2025 appropriations process, their biggest priority. This continues a decades-long congressional streak of failing miserably on the appropriations process. House Republicans will argue that they at least passed five bills on the floor compared to the whopping zero that the Senate passed.

However, the House bills were partisan exercises that had no hope of becoming law. House Republicans saw them as opening bids in negotiations, although neither the Senate nor the White House were in the mood to negotiate anything.

And for Speaker Mike Johnson and House Republicans, today’s vote isn’t the closing message they wanted heading into a frantic six-week blitz to save their embattled majority.

A week ago, Johnson and former President Donald Trump were pushing a six-month CR with the SAVE Act attached. That would require proof of citizenship to be shown before registering to vote in federal elections. Trump urged House Republicans to shut down the government over the issue.

But the GOP Conference had no stomach for that. Conservatives don’t like the bipartisan stopgap funding measure, which is why everyone will be watching to see how many House Republicans vote yes to a clean CR.

In addition to leaving town, the House also will vote today on a GOP-drafted resolution that condemns Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and other top administration officials over their handling of the disastrous 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal.

Yet think about what Congress will return to in November (Nov. 18 looks like a likely choice for that). The annual defense authorization package needs to be passed by both chambers during the lame-duck session. Lawmakers tell us that the annual Pentagon policy bill will be loaded up with all sorts of ancillary priorities.

There’s also the farm bill, which needs an extension of some length by the end of the year. And there are a host of tax provisions and health care odds and ends that Congress will be under pressure to finish up.

As usual, all of this is being left undone as lawmakers head home to take care of their ultimate must-have — getting reelected.

— John Bresnahan and Jake Sherman

October is around the corner! Join Punchbowl News founder and CEO Anna Palmer on Wednesday, Oct. 16, at 9 a.m. ET in Charlotte, N.C., for an interview with Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.). They’ll discuss the news of the day and how private equity drives innovation, supports jobs, and strengthens small businesses in North Carolina. RSVP here!

WASHINGTON X THE WORLD

GOP hawks wince at new Trump-Zelensky spat

Tensions between former President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reached a boiling point this week, frustrating Republican senators ahead of a scheduled meeting with Zelensky at the Capitol on Thursday.

The public jabs between the two sides, which began when Zelensky arrived in the United States a few days ago for the U.N. General Assembly, are threatening to complicate an already frosty relationship further. And it’s putting GOP lawmakers who support Ukraine’s war effort in a bind as they try to secure more funding to help Kyiv during the lame-duck session.

The latest spat began after Zelensky visited a munitions factory in Scranton, Pa., over the weekend with Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro and Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.). Trump’s allies dubbed it “election interference” in a battleground state.

Zelensky then gave an interview to The New Yorker in which he called Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), “too radical” and suggested he “read up” on World War II.

Zelensky also said Trump “doesn’t really know how to stop the war even if he might think he knows how,” pushing back on Trump’s vow to end the conflict with Russia if he’s elected president.

These remarks went over poorly with a number of Republicans.

“The idea that a foreign leader is here flying around on a C-17, in Pennsylvania, criticizing President Trump, criticizing JD Vance — it’s like a campaign stop that, again, just feels way over the top,” Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), a top Trump surrogate, told us.

Zelensky has been careful over the years to not wade too far into U.S. politics or be outwardly critical of Trump. But these comments represent a marked shift, one that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a staunch Zelensky ally, warned would be “the biggest mistake he’d ever make.”

“I don’t mind him going to a munitions plant thanking people for helping Ukraine. But I think his comments about JD Vance and President Trump were out of bounds,” Graham told us. “With conservatives, it’s going to hurt Ukraine.”

At a rally on Monday night, Trump lashed out at Zelensky, saying the Ukrainian president wants Democrats to win “so badly” in November. He repeated similar criticisms Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said he had no problem with Zelensky’s visit or his comments about Vance.

When asked if Zelensky’s comments were appropriate, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who has accompanied Graham on several trips to Ukraine, said the criticisms of Zelensky are “entirely misplaced.”

“President Zelensky is fighting for Ukraine’s life,” Blumenthal said. “And he needs to call out false and misguided opposition in this country for the survival of his people. And he’s right about Sen. Vance’s positions.”

One more thing: We’re not sure how many lawmakers will attend these Zelensky meetings on the Hill with Congress set to leave town today. The situation was fluid Tuesday night, especially on the House side. We’ll be tracking this closely.

— Andrew Desiderio

WASHINGTON X THE WORLD

‘This is a crisis’: Senate Foreign Relations Committee falls back into chaos

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is falling apart.

The historically bipartisan panel is slipping back into a state of paralysis after a five-month dispute that appeared resolved last week completely unraveled again late Tuesday night.

Committee members were slated to gather later this morning for their first markup since April. Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho), the panel’s top Republican, has for months refused to sign off on a committee-wide meeting to consider nominations and legislation until Democrats agree to add a House-passed ICC sanctions bill to the agenda.

Last week, Foreign Relations Committee Chair Ben Cardin (D-Md.) relented, citing the massive backlog of State Department nominees, mostly ambassadorships, that resulted from the standstill.

But late Tuesday night, Democrats removed the ICC sanctions bill from the markup agenda. Republicans countered by withdrawing their consent for the business meeting to take place.

That means the panel won’t be able to hold a markup until November at the earliest, with the Senate set to begin a long recess after this week.

“The committee’s ability to do routine business — hearings and votes on 40 or so nominees, most of whom are long-serving career public servants — has been obstructed by Republican efforts to force partisan legislation onto the agenda,” said a Democratic committee aide.

The aide added: “This is a crisis, pure and simple.”

The decision to remove the ICC bill was made after Republicans filed amendments to the measure that “made it harder, not easier to pass,” according to the aide. Some of the amendments had nothing to do with the underlying legislation, which would sanction the International Criminal Court if it attempted to “investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute Americans or our allies.”

Democrats interpreted this as a sign that Republicans were only interested in “scoring political points right before the election.”

Of course, Republicans see it differently. They’ve long said Democrats don’t want to debate the ICC bill because it divides their party.

And Republicans noted that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer had promised a bipartisan negotiation on an ICC sanctions package, which never came to fruition. The House bill passed with modest Democratic support, too.

“If the majority wants to continue the long tradition of taking on difficult issues and have a debate, it would have permitted the committee to debate and vote on the ICC bill,” said an aide to a GOP member of the panel. “Next time they want to bemoan the lack of committee action on career State Department nominees, they should look in the mirror and remember this moment.”

So what happens now? It’s anybody’s guess. But things are getting worse, not better. Nominations are piling up, and at this rate, there might not be another Foreign Relations Committee markup this Congress.

— Andrew Desiderio

PUNCHBOWL NEWS EVENTS

ICYMI: Shaheen, Scott on small business, tax reform and more

Did you miss our event on Tuesday focused on small businesses? We hosted Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) and Tim Scott (R-S.C.) to discuss the challenges facing small businesses and their efforts to help them thrive.

The lawmakers also shared their thoughts on key issues driving Washington.

You can watch the full conversation here.

— Robert O’Shaughnessy

… AND THERE’S MORE

News: Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) raised $320,000 for his joint fundraising committee Tuesday night, according to a source familiar with the campaign. Cornyn hosted a “Win Back the Majority” event at the NRSC that was attended by multiple in-cycle GOP senators.

Ad news: Republican Matt Gunderson’s latest ad introduces him and his Democratic opponent Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.) as “pro-choice on abortion.” It’s the latest bold messaging from a GOP House candidate on reproductive rights. The spot later slams Levin’s votes for spending bills.

Job moves: Keenan Austin Reed has been promoted to chief executive officer at the bipartisan government affairs firm the Alpine Group. Reed will step into the role in January, succeeding Les Spivey, who is transitioning to president. Reed, who has been with the Alpine Group since 2021, is a longtime Capitol Hill and Democratic campaign veteran. She also co-founded the Black Women’s Congressional Alliance in 2018. She is registered to lobby for clients like Adtalem Global Education Inc., Amgen, Lyft, Siemens and Starz.

— Andrew Desiderio and Max Cohen

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