The House and Senate came back from a very long recess on Monday.
Maybe they should’ve stayed gone.
Led by Speaker Mike Johnson — and under pressure from President Donald Trump — House Republicans drafted a six-month stopgap government funding bill that includes the SAVE Act. The package would require proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections while keeping agencies and departments open through March 28 — early into a potential Trump presidency.
But Johnson couldn’t round up enough GOP votes to pass the Republican-drafted bill, so he delayed any floor action. It’s just the latest embarrassing setback on spending for Johnson and top House Republicans dating back to late July.
Worse, Johnson didn’t even tell House Appropriations Committee Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) that he was postponing the vote, according to three Republican lawmakers. That upset the normally affable Cole, who’s never loved the idea of a six-month CR, although he backs the speaker’s proposal.
Across the Capitol, senators are still waiting to see what the House does on government funding. They’re not expected to move on a funding bill before the House sorts out its mess. Because why would they do that? The Senate hasn’t passed any of the FY2025 spending bills. And federal agencies are only running out of money in 18 days.
Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is moving judicial nominations and planning another show vote on an IVF bill that already failed earlier this year. There could also be a messaging vote on the long-stalled rail safety bill. Confirming federal judges, of course, is something Democrats want to prioritize given the growing likelihood that Republicans win the majority on Election Day.
“It makes it difficult. The timing makes everything difficult,” Sen. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.) lamented. “It’s a shame because some of these things need to be done.”
Congress has been stuck in neutral for months, doing little of substance. As expected, the battle for the White House — and Trump’s legal woes — dominated the headlines throughout the summer. When Democrats stunningly shifted from Joe Biden to Kamala Harris, that reset the entire political landscape, changing the nature of the reelection campaigns for many lawmakers.
Yet the presidential race was always going to suck up all the oxygen in the political world this year. Congress has just limped along until now. The House passed 25 China-related bills this week. Does anyone know or care? No. Trump’s debate debacle was all anyone wanted to discuss.
Neither chamber has accomplished much of anything since adopting the massive foreign aid and FY2024 spending packages back in March and April. FISA got reauthorized too. The debt limit isn’t an issue until 2025.
Beyond keeping the government open, the must-pass annual defense authorization bill needs to get done. Parts of the farm bill expire in a few weeks. The Department of Veterans Affairs says it must have $15 billion by Sept. 30. Low-income food programs need $8 billion quickly too. State governments want billions of dollars in disaster aid, and Maryland is pushing for the feds to pick up the tab for the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse and rebuild.
There have been some big moments but not any major legislative accomplishments since the spring. The Senate passed a landmark Big Tech crackdown intended to safeguard children online, although House GOP leaders won’t bring it up. The House stood up a bipartisan task force on the assassination attempt against Trump.
But the FY2025 appropriations process is a mess, with both chambers pursuing completely different strategies that’ll very likely yield a year-end omnibus everyone will hate.
Sen. Susan Collins (Maine), the top Senate GOP appropriator, is warning that failure to finish the FY2025 appropriations process before the end of this year would put the new president “at a huge disadvantage.” Whoever it is will come into office and immediately have to deal with getting funding bills passed even while staffing up a new administration.
“We need to get our work done as soon as possible,” Collins said.
— John Bresnahan and Andrew Desiderio
