The House and Senate are in session. President Donald Trump is having lunch with Vice President JD Vance today. The president heads to Scotland on Friday.
This is the House’s last scheduled week in session before the August recess. Members are set to leave Thursday until Sept. 2. Sometimes — although not nearly as much as the old days — it’s good to be a member of Congress.
But across the Capitol, things are looking a dicier for the Senate, which is scheduled to begin its August recess on July 31.
Trump posted on Truth Social Saturday that Senate Majority Leader John Thune should “cancel August recess (and long weekends!), in order to get my incredible nominees confirmed.”
Trump’s push certainly increases the likelihood that at least part of the recess could be scrapped. But there was chatter about this even before Trump weighed in.
Thune and Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso have been plowing through Trump’s nominees, but Democrats are forcing them to eat up valuable floor time on each one. We expect Thune to offer Democrats a package of nomination votes to close out the work period next week while threatening to keep the Senate in town if they object.
The flip side here is that Senate GOP leaders want Republican senators to use the August break to tout the “big, beautiful bill” back in their home states. That may be a better use of their time in the long run.
Yet there are dozens of Trump’s picks awaiting Senate confirmation. Senate panels like the Foreign Relations Committee have processed Trump’s nominees at a record pace — because of the president’s own prodding of Chair Jim Risch (R-Idaho) — yet there’s still a massive backlog of noms awaiting floor votes. The Judiciary Committee has also started approving Trump’s judicial picks.
Approps on tap. Thune’s more immediate moves include a key FY2026 funding vote this week and possible consideration of the annual defense policy bill next week.
Thune has teed up a vote on the MilCon-VA funding bill, which was approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee via a 26-3 vote. It’s possible that the bill could be packaged with other funding measures that have come out of the Appropriations panel on similar bipartisan margins.
As we previewed on Friday, this will be a key test vote for the prospects of a government shutdown. Senate Democrats have said they want a bipartisan process but that Republicans’ support for Trump’s $9 billion rescissions package blew up any chance of a deal.
It’s unclear how Senate Democrats will handle this week’s vote, but they aren’t likely to say so until GOP leaders decide whether to package it with other funding bills.
Passing the bills would achieve what Senate Democrats say they want — a bipartisan appropriations process. Many Democrats have noted that the Senate bills call for more spending than the House GOP-drafted bills.
But top Democrats are casting doubt on the notion of helping Republicans pass any of them, citing rescissions and the White House’s hostility toward Congress’ power of the purse.
Unlike House GOP appropriators, Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Sen. Patty Murray (Wash.), the top Democrat on the panel, made a bipartisan deal on the MilCon-VA bill.
It includes lots of money for Maine projects (nearly $460 million), which is important for Collins, who is up for reelection. That would all be in jeopardy if there’s no agreement between the White House and Democrats, and federal agencies are funded once again using a continuing resolution.
House GOP appropriators have scheduled full-committee markups for three FY2026 bills this week as they prepare to get out of town – Interior, National Security-State and Commerce-Justice-Science.
These House Republican proposals stick largely to Trump’s “skinny” budget plan, which calls for $163 billion in cuts to non-defense discretionary spending, which Democrats and the Senate oppose.
The draft FSGG bill from House Republicans – released Sunday night – cuts $2.9 billion from the FY2025 enacted level, or 11% less. IRS spending would be slashed by $2.8 billion under the GOP plan, while the Consumer Products Safety Commission and FCC would get less as well. The Executive Office of the President and OMB would see their budgets reduced slightly too.
There’s also no money for a new FBI headquarters, a big issue as Trump seeks to block the bureau from moving to a new Maryland site.
