The House met at noon and will consider 24 bills under suspension of the Rules, including H.R. 3325, To award four congressional gold medals to the United States Capitol Police and those who protected the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
The Senate met at 10 a.m. and resumed consideration of the nomination of Lina M. Khan to be a Federal Trade Commissioner and will also consider the nomination of Kiran Arjandas Ahuja to be Director of the Office of Personnel Management.
In hearings of note, at 10 a.m. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack began testifying before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm began testifying before the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. At 2 p.m. two hearings on the January 6th Trump incited insurrection will begin, Capitol Police IG Michael Bolton is testifying before the House Administration Committee, and FBI Director Christopher Wray before the Oversight Committee.
With the Senate set to leave town on June 24th for nearly three weeks for the Independence Day recess the White House is giving bipartisan talks on a compromise infrastructure package another week to 10 days to bear fruit and is prepared to endorse a Democrat-only route if that effort fails. White House counselor Steve Ricchetti told a meeting of House Democrats this morning that the administration will give the effort by a group of senators “a week or 10 days and then we move along to reconciliation,” referring to fast-track legislation that doesn’t need GOP support. A group of five GOP and five Democratic senators, led by Republican Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Democrat Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia), has been wrangling in recent days to refine a tentative compromise to move an infrastructure package through Congress using regular rules. After announcing an agreement and top-line spending levels, they have so far failed to release a detailed proposal, with talks continuing on funding mechanisms and how the money is to be allocated among projects. Later on Tuesday, the five Republicans from the bipartisan group plan to brief the full Senate Republican conference on their plan in the hopes of attracting at least the five more Republican votes it would need to clear the Senate under the normal legislative process — where 60 total votes are needed. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) has not yet weighed in on the substance of the group’s plan, saying Monday he saw a 50-50 chance of a deal.
In Brussels today, President Biden announced the end of a bitter, 17-year dispute with the European Union over aircraft subsidies for Boeing and Airbus, suspending the threat of billions of dollars in punitive tariffs on each other’s economies for five years. The breakthrough came as Mr. Biden prepared to meet top European leaders in a U.S.-E.U. summit meeting. European officials said that two days of negotiations in Brussels between Katherine Tai, the U.S. trade representative, and Valdis Dombrovskis, the E.U. trade commissioner, had finally produced an agreement that member countries approved overnight. In a briefing for reporters, Tai said that both sides had agreed to extend a suspension of tariffs for another five years while working together to counter China’s investment in the aircraft sector. The agreement means that significant punitive tariffs estimated at $11.5 billion, on a wide range of products including wine, tractors, spirits, molasses and cheese, will continue to be suspended after both sides had agreed to do so in March while they tried to settle the dispute. U.S.-EU Summit Statement.
Tomorrow, President Biden will meet Russian President Vladimir V. Putin at 1 p.m. local time (7 a.m. ET) at the lakeside villa where the summit is occurring. Putin will arrive to the villa first and both will be greeted by the Swiss president before all three pose for a photo. Their first meeting will contain four participants: Biden, Putin, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Each side will have a translator, and there will likely be a pool photo-op at the start. The meeting will then expand with five-member delegations on each side, in addition to Biden and Putin but it wasn’t yet clear who would participate in the US delegation. US officials said they expected the talks to last four to five hours, or perhaps longer. The two leaders will conclude by convening separate press conferences.
