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September 26, 2022
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THE TOP
Happy Monday morning. Happy Rosh Hashanah to those celebrating.
Due to the holiday, the House is out of session on Monday and Tuesday. The Senate is out today but has a high-profile vote Tuesday on the legislative vehicle for a short-term government-funding bill. Federal agencies run out of funding on Friday, so this vote will be the key to what unfolds throughout the rest of the week. Lawmakers are anxious to get back home to campaign and they want to wrap up legislative business as soon as possible.
The continuing resolution – which still hasn’t been formally unveiled – will include more than $12 billion in military and economic aid for Ukraine, a top priority for the White House and congressional leaders in both parties. The package calls for reauthorizing FDA user fees. There’s also money for resettling Afghan refugees, boosting low-income winter heating assistance and providing disaster relief in Jackson, Miss.
The CR will keep federal agencies open through mid-December. Appropriators hope to have an omnibus spending package for the remainder of FY 2023 finished by then.
But first, the Senate has to formally begin debating the CR. The big hangup there is Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-W.Va.) permitting reform proposal. Known officially as the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2022, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has pledged to attach the Manchin proposal to the CR.
Yet there’s opposition from both sides of the aisle to the measure. Republicans don’t want to give Manchin another legislative win, believing he misled them over the Inflation Reduction Act, while progressive Democrats – especially Sen Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) – complain it will lead to more oil and natural gas drilling.
Manchin has been lobbying publicly and privately for his plan. He appeared on Fox News Sunday and wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal. A Manchin aide said the West Virginia Democrat “was working the phones over the weekend and shored up several more [Republican] votes.” Manchin is “confident” there is a “path to 60” votes for cloture on the motion to proceed to the legislative vehicle for the CR, the aide said. That’s what Tuesday’s cloture vote is about.
However, if they can’t get 60, Schumer will strip the Manchin proposal from the CR and move ahead anyway. As we noted, government funding runs out on Friday, so the CR must pass by the end of this week.
Manchin believes failure to pass his proposal would be a huge missed opportunity for the country. Here’s Manchin to Fox News’ Shannon Bream:
Lawmakers want to head home ASAP. Which means don’t underestimate some “Senate magic” on the CR once the Manchin situation is resolved. Across the Capitol, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer has warned members that the chamber will stay in session through this weekend if necessary to avoid a shutdown, although it may not actually come to that.
Hoyer also said the House may vote on legislation to ban stock trading by members and senior staff before it adjourns. That proposal hasn’t been publicly released yet either. House Administration Committee Chair Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), who is taking the lead role on the measure, has been non-committal on timing beyond saying she “hopes” to release it “very soon.”
The other big event of the week on Capitol Hill will be the Jan. 6 select committee’s hearing on Wednesday. This is the last hearing for the panel before Election Day.
The select committee hasn’t announced a witness list or topic for this session. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), a member of the select committee, told Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union” that the hearing could be “potentially more sweeping than some of the other hearings. But it too will be very thematic. It will tell the story about a key element of Donald Trump’s plot to overturn the election.”
| → | Economic news: The “hawkish” anti-inflation push on interest rates last week by the Federal Reserve and other central banks continues to roil world financial markets. |
In Britain, where the government is cutting taxes and increasing spending to boost the economy, the pound hit a record low against the dollar. There’s a chance the dollar and the pound might reach parity soon, a once unthinkable scenario. The mighty greenback, in fact, is crushing other major currencies as investors seek a safe harbor.
Wall Street will be closely watching the release of the personal consumer expenditures data for August on Friday. This is the Fed’s preferred tool for measuring inflation. PCE covers household spending and income. Policymakers are hoping for some signs that U.S. inflation is cooling off.
– John Bresnahan
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👀
Who we’re watching
| → | Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.): Manchin’s permitting reform proposal faces a key procedural vote on Tuesday night. Senior Senate Republicans oppose the measure, as do many progressive Democrats, but Manchin has been working to round up votes for the Energy Independence and Security Act. Manchin’s aides say the West Virginia Democrat is “confident” there’s a path to 60 votes to move forward, but the outcome is in doubt. |
| → | Reps. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.): The select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection holds another hearing on Wednesday, the final public session before members return home for Election Day. Thompson and Cheney haven’t said yet what this hearing will be about, further upping the drama. |
| → | Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.): Lofgren – chair of the House Administration Committee – is a key ally of Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Lofgren faces the difficult task of crafting legislation to ban stock trading by members and senior staffers. While the idea is hugely popular and enjoys a lot of support even among lawmakers, actually turning that concept into a workable bill has been a big challenge. House Democratic leaders want to have a vote on the measure this week. We’ll see if that actually happens. |
– John Bresnahan
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What we’re watching
| → | Tuesday: The Senate Rules Committee will meet to consider the Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act of 2022. |
| → | Wednesday: The Jan. 6 select committee has a 1 p.m. hearing. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will hold a hearing about keeping pressure on Russia using sanctions. James O’Brien, the head of the Office of Sanctions Coordination at the State Department, and Elizabeth Rosenberg, the assistant secretary of Treasury for Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes, will testify. The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on accountability for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including Ukraine. |
| → | Thursday: The Senate Foreign Relation Committee will have a closed briefing on Ukraine. Victoria Nuland, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, will be among the briefers. The House Committee on Oversight and Reform will hold a hearing on the impact of a possible national abortion ban. |
– Jake Sherman and John Bresnahan
TEXAS TRIBUNE FESTIVAL
What we learned in Austin
The Punchbowl News team had a blast this weekend at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin. We hosted five panels at our Open Congress tent on Saturday, featuring members of Congress, mayors, congressional candidates and best-selling authors. Thanks so much to all who attended in person!
Here are the highlights from our five amazing panels.
Schiff on Jan. 6 and term limits for committee chairs
House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) kicked off our Saturday programming by delving into his role on the Jan. 6 select committee.
| → | Schiff previewed the next steps for the panel investigating the Capitol attack: |
| → | Schiff, who is mulling a run for House Democratic leadership, took a somewhat controversial stance when he endorsed term limits for committee chairs. Republicans have term limits in place, but Democrats have resisted such calls. |
“We need to do more to rapidly elevate people to positions of leadership,” Schiff said.
| → | Schiff told us he raised $1.1 million over three weeks in August and September for the DCCC and Democratic candidates. Schiff campaigned for 17 candidates in person. |
Wesley Hunt, Monica De La Cruz and Morgan Luttrell on 2022
Three Texas Republican congressional candidates seen as the future of the party dished on how they viewed the political landscape.
| → | Monica De La Cruz, who’s running for the open Texas 15th District in the southern part of the state, predicted the Republican Party will win over Hispanic voters in 2022. |
| → | Wesley Hunt, who’s seeking a newly created Houston-area seat, said “Kevin McCarthy is going to be the speaker of the House and we’re in all agreement about that.” |
| → | Morgan Luttrell, running in retiring Rep. Kevin Brady’s (R-Texas) district, said he would not have supported billions of dollars of military and economic aid to Ukraine following the Russian invasion in Febuary. It was a revealing sign of how a potential Republican House majority would view foreign aid. |
Jasmine Crockett and Greg Casar on progressive House politics
Crockett and Casar, two progressive Democrats seeking safely blue Texas House seats, let loose in a candid conversation.
| → | Crockett, Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson’s (D-Texas) hand-picked successor, talked about the complex relationship between the Squad and the Congressional Black Caucus. |
| → | Casar chimed in on the debate over term limits for committee chairs. |
| → | Interesting: Both Crockett and Casar indicated support for Speaker Nancy Pelosi serving another term atop the House Democratic caucus if the party keeps the majority. |
“If the speaker decides that she wants to continue being speaker, I will absolutely support her,” Crockett said.
“If we just won this uphill battle to hold the House and she wants to stay speaker, I’m supportive of that. My understanding is if we lose the House, then we will likely have a whole new set of folks running for leadership,” Casar added.
Mayors of San Antonio, Houston and New Orleans talk climate
Three mayors of major U.S. cities discussed their efforts to fight climate change at the local level.
| → | Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, a Democrat, applauded the climate mitigation investments included in the Inflation Reduction Act. |
| → | New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell, who is also a Democrat, said New Orleans is on the frontlines of the climate crisis: “Storms are coming faster. Our focus is on mitigation and adaptation.” |
| → | San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg, an independent, discussed how economics may motivate climate skeptics. |
Susan Glasser and Peter Baker on the Trump presidency
Our final conversation featured the New Yorker’s Susan Glasser and the New York Times’ Peter Baker to discuss their new book: “The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021.”
| → | Baker shared a revealing anecdote of how difficult it is to interview former President Donald Trump due to his constantly changing stories. |
| → | Baker on Trump’s obsession with validation: |
| → | Glasser pushed back on the narrative that Trump is charming in a one-on-one setting: “This man is not charming. He is a self-absorbed, rambling, narcissistic, old man who doesn’t care what your questions are.” |
— Max Cohen
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THE CAMPAIGN
| → | New: The American Action Network, an organization that aims to boost the House GOP agenda, has a new memo touting polling showing the party’s Commitment to America agenda is broadly popular. The polling was done in battleground districts and safe Republican seats. |
| → | New: Rep. Josh Harder’s (D-Calif.) second general election ad touts the incumbent as a supporter of small business while attacking his GOP opponent, Tom Patti. |
“We wouldn’t have made it without Josh Harder. He helped small businesses to get the loans we needed to keep us afloat. He was relentless,” a small business owner says in the ad. “But Tom Patti is just out for himself.”
Harder is a Frontline Democrat in a district that the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter rates as “Lean Democratic.”
— Max Cohen and Jake Sherman
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At Wells Fargo, we cover more rural markets than many large banks, and nearly 30% of our branches are in low- or moderate-income census tracts. What we say, we do. See how.