The House Is Scheduled to Take Up Its First FY 2026 Appropriations Bill, Nominees in the Senate While OBBBA Looms in the Background
Jason Pye - Vice President, Due Process Institute
Point of Order is a (mostly) weekly preview of key congressional activity for those with more than a passing interest in federal policy.
See you in Rhode Island: If you’re heading to Rhode Island for the Niskanen Center’s 2nd Annual Criminal Justice Convening, I’ll see you there. The Wife™️ is also joining me. Let’s face it. You want to hang out with her, not me. I’m pretty boring unless you want to talk about punk rock, college football, or politics and policy. She can talk about more “real people” things.
Schedule and suspensions in the House: The House returns at 2:00 pm on Monday for legislative business. Votes are postponed until 6:30 pm. The House will also be in session on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. The last votes for the week are expected no later than 3:00 pm on Thursday. Twenty-one (21) bills are expected to be considered under the suspension of the rules (listed below). The cost estimates for those bills are available here.
H.R. 260, No Tax Dollars for Terrorists Act (Foreign Affairs Committee)
H.R. 1998, Sanction Sea Pirates Act (Foreign Affairs Committee)
H.R. 1737, To direct the Secretary of Commerce to submit to Congress a report containing an assessment of the value, cost, and feasibility of a trans-Atlantic submarine fiber optic cable connecting the contiguous United States, the United States Virgin Islands, Ghana, and Nigeria. (Energy and Commerce Committee)
H.R. 2481, Romance Scam Prevention Act (Energy and Commerce Committee)
H.R. 1679, Global Investment in American Jobs Act (Energy and Commerce Committee)
H.R. 2269, WIPPES Act (Energy and Commerce Committee)
H.R. 1767, Awning Safety Act (Energy and Commerce Committee)
H.R. 1664, Deploying American Blockchains Act (Energy and Commerce Committee)
H.R. 1520, Charlotte Woodward Organ Transplant Discrimination Prevention Act (Energy and Commerce Committee)
H.R. 1082, Shandra Eisenga Human Cell and Tissue Product Safety Act (Energy and Commerce Committee)
H.R. 3394, Fair Investment Opportunities for Professional Experts Act (Financial Services Committee)
H.R. 910, Taiwan Non-Discrimination Act (Financial Services Committee)
H.R. 1713, Agricultural Risk Review Act (Financial Services Committee)
H.R. 3352, HALOS Act (Financial Services Committee)
H.R. 2225, Access to Small Business Investor Capital Act (Financial Services Committee)
H.R. 3301, ELEVATE Act (Financial Services Committee)
H.R. 3381, Encouraging Public Offerings Act (Financial Services Committee)
H.R. 1190, Expanding Access to Capital for Rural Job Creators Act (Financial Services Committee)
H.R. 3422, Promoting Opportunities for Non-Traditional Capital Formation Act (Financial Services Committee)
H.R. 2808, Homebuyers Privacy Protection Act (Financial Services Committee)
H. Res. 519, Condemning the attacks on Minnesota lawmakers in Brooklyn Park and Champlin, Minnesota, and calling for unity and the rejection of political violence in Minnesota and across the United States (Oversight and Government Reform Committee)
Bills that come to the floor under suspension of the rules require two-thirds of members present and voting for passage. This is the most common way that bills considered by the House come to the floor. Some of these bills may be passed by a voice vote, rather than a roll call vote. Most bills that come to the floor under suspension aren’t widely considered controversial, although leadership may occasionally test a bill under suspension to gauge opposition or sneak a bill through the chamber.
Rule bills: The House Rules Committee will meet today at 4:00 pm to markup the rule providing for the consideration of the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act for FY 2026 (MilCon-VA), H.R. 3944; the Jeremy and Angel Seay and Sergeant Brandon Mendoza Protect Our Communities from DUIs Act, H.R. 875; the Special Interest Alien Reporting Act, H.R. 275; and a resolution condemning the violent June 2025 riots in Los Angeles, California, H. Res. 516.
Since we have an appropriations bill on the floor: I haven’t heard much about “regular order” this year. Which is too bad, considering that the House is behind schedule on appropriations bills. Sec. 300 of the Budget Act (2 U.S.C. §631) has a timetable for the budget and appropriations process. The House Appropriations Committee is supposed to report the last of the 12 appropriations bills by June 10. The House is supposed to complete the final annual appropriations bill on June 30. How many appropriations bills had the full committee marked up by June 10? One. That’s MilCon-VA, which is on the floor this week. The committee also completed the Defense appropriations bill, but past the June 10 deadline. Three more are on the committee’s calendar this week–Legislative Branch, Homeland Security, and Agriculture. The rest of the work will be pushed into July. That’s not regular order. Also, few believe there’s a legitimate shot of a full-year appropriations for FY 2026. The so-called “skinny budget” released by the Trump administration faces opposition from Democrats and some Republicans, particularly in the Senate. It’s hard to see anything but another continuing resolution (CR). I’m not saying a CR is certain. It just seems highly likely.
House committee schedule: The full House committee schedule for the week is here. If you’re interested in watching any of these hearings online, you can find committee websites here.
Nominees on the floor, as the Senate awaits OBBBA: The Senate returns at 4:30 pm today for a period of morning business. Before adjourning last week, cloture motions were filed on the nominations of Daniel Zimmerman to serve as Assistant Secretary of Defense, Paul Dabbar to serve as Deputy Secretary of Commerce, and Kenneth Kies to serve as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury. The Senate will likely take a roll call vote on the Zimmerman nomination beginning around 5:30 pm.
What’s happening with OBBBA: Each Senate committee with jurisdiction over part of the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” H.R. 1, has released its recommendations. Committees began the process of submitting their text to the Senate parliamentarian for compliance with the Byrd rule. Thus far, recommendations to eliminate funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, shift some food stamp costs to states, and some other proposed spending cuts were nixed. A list of some of the impermissible provisions can be found here. The Senate Finance Committee’s recommendations are scheduled to go before the parliamentarian this week. Could OBBBA come to the floor this week? It’s possible, but it’s not clear Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) has the votes right now. There’s haziness over several issues. On one hand, some Senate Republicans are criticizing or voicing concern about the proposed Medicaid cuts. Conservatives want to go bigger on cuts. Keep an eye on two blocks of senators. The first Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), and Josh Hawley (R-MO). They’ve been the most vocal about going too far on Medicaid cuts. You could potentially include Sens. Jerry Moran (R-KS) and Jim Justice (R-WV) in this block, too. The second is Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Rick Scott (R-FL), who want bigger spending cuts. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is almost certainly a "no" on OBBBA if the $5 trillion debt limit increase remains in the bill.
Oh, and we have an early estimate on the Finance Committee recommendations: The Joint Committee on Taxation has released its initial estimate of the provisions from the Senate Finance Committee. We should note that the recommendations were released through the “current policy baseline” gimmick, which is an attempt to hide the real deficit impact of the legislation. Andrew Lautz of the Bipartisan Policy Center estimates that the total hit to the deficit of the Finance recommendations exceeds $4.2 trillion. (I haven’t had time to run this on my own, but Andrew is a smart dude.)
Senate committee schedule: The full Senate committee schedule for the week is here. If you’re interested in watching any of these hearings online, you can find committee websites here.
You thought we were done? Nope, I’ve got more depressing news: New reports from the trustees of Social Security and Medicare show that the programs are quickly running out of cash. The Social Security Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) Trust Fund will be depleted in 2033, at which point it will be able to pay out only 77 percent of scheduled benefits. The Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fund is also expected to exhaust its funds in 2033. The trust fund will be able to pay out 89 percent of scheduled benefits. The rest of Medicare is paid through transfers from the general fund to the program, as well as premiums. Between Social Security and Medicare, Congress faces $85.3 trillion in unfunded obligations. Add in the share of the debt held by the public, and it’s $114.2 trillion. Fun times.
CBO on the House-passed OBBBA: No, that it matters, because the Senate is going to change the bill, but the Congressional Budget Office finally released the dynamic score of OBBBA last week. Dynamic scoring considers macroeconomic feedback when estimating the budgetary impacts of legislation. The House-passed OBBBA estimated a $2.416 trillion increase in the deficit over ten years. That’s just conventional math and doesn’t account for changes in the economy. Add in net interest, and it’s $2.967 trillion. The dynamic estimate is $2.773 trillion. Add in the dynamically scored net interest costs, and you’re at increased deficits of $3.4 trillion over ten years. Let’s not talk about the deficit impact of extending the 16 provisions that’ll expire beginning in FY 2029.
Deficit watch: The budget deficit through May of FY 2025 was $1.363 trillion. Revenues are up 6 percent while outlays are up 8 percent. Net interest on the debt held by the public remains the second-largest category of federal spending (get used to this), behind only Social Security. Since tariffs have been in the news, “Other Receipts” includes revenue collected from tariffs. The increase from the same point in FY 2024 is only $43 billion. CBO indicates that tariffs account for $30 billion of that. Yes, tariff revenue is up, but the notion that we’re collecting a substantial amount of revenue from them is ludicrous. Of course, the uncertainty and pauses in tariffs have kept that revenue stream down.