Crisis Averted by Congress, Motion to Remove McCarthy Looking Likely, New Senator from California
Jason Pye - Director, Rule of Law Initiatives
Point of Order is a (mostly) weekly preview of key congressional activity for those with more than a passing interest in federal policy.
And the federal government is funded for six weeks: Well, that was an eventful weekend. If you weren’t paying attention, the House tried to vote on a conservative continuing resolution (CR), the Spending Reduction and Border Security Act, H.R. 5525, only to see it fail when 21 Republicans (mostly House Freedom Caucus members) voted against it. With the Senate still processing its version of a CR, and no guarantees that the House would consider it when it passed, it looked like we were heading toward a government shutdown on October 1. On Saturday, though, things changed. With the far-right of his conference preventing movement on conservative CR, Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) decided to put a CR, H.R. 5860, on the floor that continues FY 2023 spending levels through November 17 and included disaster relief funding. (Unfortunately, funding for Ukraine was left out of the CR to appease some Republicans.) Although House Democrats, who wanted the Senate CR, delayed a vote on passage with a very long vote on a motion to adjourn, the House passed the CR by a wide margin. The Senate CR was pulled after Republicans indicated that they would block it. Admittedly, I expected objections on a time agreement in the Senate on the House-passed CR, but that didn’t materialize. The Senate passed the CR with very limited opposition. The House will try to continue its work on appropriations bills. Presumably, the Senate will do the same.
But the movement on the CR wasn’t without drama: Because obviously. The first piece of drama happened because Rep. Jamal Bowman (D-NY) pulled a fire alarm in the Cannon House Office Building. He claimed that he thought pulling the fire alarm would open the door. Um, doesn’t sound legit, but okay. Some have claimed that Bowman was trying to delay a vote on the CR, but I don’t buy that for two reasons: 1) the House was voting on the motion to adjourn when Bowman pulled the fire alarm and 2) pulling a fire alarm in Cannon isn’t going to evacuate the Capitol, where the vote was taking place. Still, Bowman’s explanation just isn’t believable, and the incident is under investigation by the House Administration Committee and Capitol Police. Some Republicans, though, are overplaying their hand on this by talking about expelling Bowman. That isn’t going to happen. Others are comparing the incident to January 6, and that’s just laughably absurd. There’s more drama related to the CR that I’ll get to below.
Schedule and suspensions: The House returns today at 2:00 pm for legislative business. Votes are postponed until 6:30 pm. Legislative business will begin at 10:00 am on Tuesday and Wednesday, and at 9:00 am on Thursday. The House isn’t currently scheduled to be in session on Friday. Five bills are expected to be considered under suspension of the rules.
H.R. 4502, Modernizing the Acquisition of Cybersecurity Experts Act (Oversight and Accountability Committee)
H.R. 292, To designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 24355 Creekside Road in Santa Clarita, California, as the "William L. Reynolds Post Office Building" (Oversight and Accountability Committee)
H.R. 996, To designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 3901 MacArthur Blvd., in New Orleans, Louisiana, as the "Dr. Rudy Lombard Post Office" (Oversight and Accountability Committee)
H.R. 2379, To designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 616 East Main Street in St. Charles, Illinois, as the "Veterans of the Vietnam War Memorial Post Office" (Oversight and Accountability Committee)
H.R. 3944, To designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 120 West Church Street in Mount Vernon, Georgia, as the "Second Lieutenant Patrick Palmer Calhoun Post Office" (Oversight and Accountability Committee)
Rule bills: The House Rules Committee will meet today at 4:00 pm to markup the rule for the Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act for FY 2024, H.R. 4394, and the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act for FY 2024, H.R. 4364. As of very early this morning, 122 amendments have been filed to the Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act and only one amendment has been filed to the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act. It’s possible that other legislation, including appropriations bills, could be considered before the House leaves town. For example, the Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act for FY 2024, H.R. 4821, is likely the next appropriations bill on the agenda since the amendment submission deadline is set for Tuesday.
The status of appropriations bills: The House has, to date, completed work on four appropriations bills—Military Construction and Veterans Affairs (MilCon-VA), Defense, Homeland Security, and State and Foreign Ops—while another bill, Agriculture, failed to pass last week. So, we have Energy and Water and Legislative Branch on the floor this week. Interior and Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development (T-HUD) are likely on the floor next week. If the House can get those four done, all that’s left is Agriculture (which, again, previously failed); Commerce, Justice, and Science (CJS); Financial Services and General Government (FGSS), and Labor, Health, and Education (Labor-H). However, CJS and Labor-H are still stuck in the House Appropriations Committee, and both of these bills are going to attract a ton of messaging amendments. Once the House finishes its work, and assuming the Senate does the same, the two chambers will have to hash out conference reports for final passage. Needless to say, the next 45 days are going to be a little crazy.
Don’t let anyone tell you this is regular order: I want to call your attention to 2 U.S.C. §631, which is Section 300 of the Budget Act. Please take a look at the timetable there. The House is required by statute to be done with the appropriations process on June 30. We’re well past regular order at this point. Not only that, when, and if, Congress finishes the appropriations process, we’ll be six weeks into FY 2024. Also, House conservatives had no problem throwing regular order out the window last week to strip Ukraine funding from the Defense appropriations bill, which ended up getting passed in another bill anyway.
Back to the drama for a moment: After literal weeks of threats, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) says that he’ll file a motion to vacate to remove Speaker McCarthy from his post. For real this time. He means it. Over the weekend, House Freedom Caucus Chairman Scott Perry (R-PA) downplayed a motion to vacate and said that Speaker McCarthy didn’t “have any other option” after many of his members and a handful of other Republicans defeated a conservative CR. We’ll see how this plays out. A motion to vacate is privileged, but it could be blocked if on a procedural motion like how Republicans handled the attempt by Rep. Lauren Beetlejuice Boebert (R-CO) to impeach President Biden several weeks ago. If enough Republicans vote to oust Speaker McCarthy, and it’s an open question whether there are, it’ll be interesting to see what House Democrats do. They could offset disgruntled Republicans by voting “present,” but you have to wonder if they’ll seek concessions.
House committee schedule: As of very early this morning, the only committee meeting that had been noticed was the Rules Committee meeting today at 4:00 pm. I encourage you to check here if you want to see if any other hearings are noticed after I publish this week’s newsletter.
A nominee to kick off the week in the Senate: The Senate will convene on Tuesday at 3:00 pm to resume consideration of the James C. O’Brien to serve as an Assistant Secretary of State. The cloture motion on O’Brien’s nomination was filed before the Senate left town. A roll call vote on the cloture motion is expected to begin around 5:30 pm. Cloture motions were also filed on the nominations of Brendan Abell Hurson to serve as a judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, Susan Kim DeClercq to serve as a judge on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan.
Appropriations in the Senate: Presumably, the Senate will get back to the Agriculture, MilCon-VA, and T-HUD minibus, H.R. 4366, at some point this week. There had been an impasse on amendments, but that may now be settled with the passage of the CR.
Military nominations: Honestly, I’m not sure how many, if any, of these were being held up by Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), but I’ll note that the Senate cleared a very long list of military nominations by unanimous consent on Saturday at the close of the session.
Rest in peace, Senator Feinstein: As you probably heard, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) passed away on Friday at the age of 90. There’s not anything I can say about Feinstein that hasn’t already been said. She was a trailblazer for women in politics and remained cordial with her colleagues at very tenuous times, which, in this time of hyperpartisan nonsense, wasn’t appreciated by many in her own party.
Party divisions in the Senate: Indications are that California Gov. Gavin Newsome will name Laphonza Butler to serve the remainder of Feinstein’s term, which runs through the current Congress. Butler has served as the president of EMILY’s List since September 2021. She will be the third Black woman to serve in the Senate and the second openly lesbian senator to serve. Until Butler is sworn in, which is expected to happen Wednesday, the party divisions in the Senate are 50 Democrats (including two independents who caucus with Democrats) and 49 Republicans.
Senate committee schedule: Below are some Senate committee hearings that may be of interest. The full Senate committee schedule for the week is here.
Back to School with the SHOP SAFE Act: Protecting Our Families from Unsafe Online Counterfeits (Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Tuesday at 2:30 pm)
Nominations Hearing (Judiciary, Wednesday at 10:00 am)
Build Act Reauthorization and Development Finance Corporation Oversight (Foreign Relations, Wednesday at 10:00 am)
CHIPS and Science Implementation and Oversight (Commerce, Science, and Transportation; Wednesday at 2:00 pm)
Security on the Korean Peninsula (Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asia, The Pacific, and International Cybersecurity Policy; Wednesday at 2:30 pm)
VA Accountability and Transparency: A Cornerstone of Quality Care and Benefits for Veterans (Veterans’ Affairs, Wednesday at 3:00 pm)
Executive Business Meeting (Judiciary, Thursday at 10:00 am)
Nominations Hearing (Foreign Relations, Thursday at 10:00 am)
The Costs of a Government Shutdown (Budget, Thursday at 10:00 am)
Nomination Hearing (Commerce, Science, and Transportation; Thursday at 10:00 am)
If you’re interested in watching any of these hearings online, you can find committee websites here.
I survived COVID-19 for the second time, and all I got was a backed-up inbox: The second time with COVID-19 was, uh, not fun. The first time, which was last summer, was way worse. I’m alive and kicking. I wanted to use this awkward intro to share something I’ve been working on in my free time. Since the fall of 2021, I’ve been writing music. It started out with a couple of random songs. In the past year, I’ve written 22 songs. All I have is music. No vocals. (Maybe eventually I’ll do that or have someone do it?) Anyway, I’ve put everything online, feel free to take a listen and tell me what you think. I’ve also done some cover songs. (The amount of Taylor Swift on there is entirely because of the almost eight-year-old girl we have at home.)
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