Both the Senate and House are back in session today after the July Fourth recess. The Senate is expected to be in session until Friday, August 5th and the House until Friday, July 29th before leaving for August recess.
Over the weekend, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) announced progress over recess in negotiations with Senator Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) on a long-delayed budget reconciliation package, but an aide to Manchin cautioned a deal is still not close. Talks between Schumer and Manchin on elements of President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better agenda picked up momentum as they reached agreement on a proposal to lower the costs of some prescription drugs and to increase taxes on wealthy individuals who earn income from pass-through businesses. The estimated $203 billion in revenue raised by the tax increase would be used to extend the solvency of Medicare’s hospital trust fund by three years. Other areas remain unresolved, including the energy and climate portion of the deal. The expectation is that spending for the climate provisions is likely to hover around $300 billion which would align with the tax credit outline submitted by the Senate Finance Committee for budget scoring late last year. However, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) warned over the recess that he would hold up the final version of the China legislation, known as the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act (USICA), unless Democrats stopped trying to move a reconciliation measure through the chamber with just Democratic votes. The Republican leader doubled down on his threat Monday, warning that “party-line scheming” on the budget reconciliation bill that would include hundreds of billions of dollars in tax increases would bring Senate business to a halt.
Health concerns will also complicate the Senate schedule this week. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) on Monday announced he had tested positive for COVID-19 and will work remotely this week, missing an expected vote on President Biden’s nominee to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Steve Dettelbach. The announcement came less than 24 hours after Majority Leader Schumer announced that he too has tested positive for COVID-19 and will miss votes this week. A third Democratic senator, 82-year-old Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), is recovering from surgery after falling and breaking his hip last month. Democrats will likely not have votes to do anything but bipartisan nominees that have broad bipartisan support this week.
For today, the Senate convened at 10:00 A.M. and will try to work its way through a number of nominations, including Ashish S. Vazirani to be a Deputy Under Secretary of Defense, Steven M. Dettelbach to be Director, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives and Michael S. Barr to be a Member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System for the unexpired term of fourteen years from February 1, 2018.
The House will reconvene at 2:00 P.M. and will consider up to 22 bills under suspension of the Rules. House Democrats under pressure to take quick action in response to the Supreme Court’s decision, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, striking down abortion rights, are planning to hold votes this week on legislation that seeks to preserve access to abortions in the post-Roe v. Wade era. The bills are all but certain to fail in the evenly divided Senate, where broad Republican opposition means they cannot muster the 60 votes to move forward. Lacking the votes to force action, Democrats are using the debate to show voters where they stand and portray Republicans as widely out of step with a majority of Americans, who polls consistently show support abortion access. The first measure, which Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) plans to bring to a vote this week, would protect the right to travel for abortion services. A second measure, a version of which passed the House last year, would explicitly give health care providers the right to provide abortion services and their patients the right to obtain them, invalidating a variety of restrictions that were enacted in the aftermath of Roe.
Adam S. Olsen, Washington, D.C.
