Senator Chuck Schumer (D-New York) was reelected Thursday morning to serve another term as Senate majority leader, capping a successful two years, after being reelected to a fifth Senate term in November. Senate Democrats also reelected the rest of Schumer’s leadership team, giving Senator Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) another term as Senate Democratic whip, Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-Michigan) another term as Democratic Policy Committee chairwoman, Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) another term as chairwoman the Democratic Steering Committee and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) as chairman of the Democratic Outreach Committee. The biggest change made to the Senate Democratic leadership structure is that Senator Patty Murray (D-Washington) will take over as Senate president pro tempore, putting her third in line to the presidency. The current president pro temp, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), will retire from Congress at the end of the year. Murray’s previous leadership post of assistant Democratic leader will be eliminated.
The House just voted to pass legislation, H.R. 8404 – Respect for Marriage Act , to protect same-sex and interracial marriage, the last step before the measure goes to President Joe Biden for his signature and becomes law. The House vote was 258 to 169 with 39 Republicans joining the Democrats voting in favor. While the bill would not set a national requirement that all states must legalize same-sex marriage, it would require individual states to recognize another state’s legal marriage.
As bipartisan negotiations on a sprawling year-end package to fund the government remain mired in gridlock, Democrats have a new negotiation plan which is to publicly release their own partisan proposal on Monday. Democratic appropriators want that plan, which they’ve been drafting behind the scenes while bipartisan negotiations flounder, to come up for a vote in the House and Senate next week. Democrats are attempting to write their spending package in a way that could get the needed 60 votes in the Senate. Democrats are demanding $26 billion more in domestic spending than Republicans are willing to give, just a fraction of what could be a $1.7 trillion funding bill for the current fiscal year. Republicans argue that Democrats achieved that spending through their party-line climate, tax, health and COVID bills, while Democrats argue that shouldn’t be related to the government funding bill and additional spending is necessary. It’s a near-certainty that Congress will have to pass a short-term spending patch to continue negotiations up until Christmas or possibly later as funding is set to expire on December 16th.
For today, the Senate is considering the nomination of Jeffery Paul Hopkins to be United States District Judge for the Southern District of Ohio, the nomination of Tamika R. Montgomery-Reeves to be United States Circuit Judge for the Third Circuit and the nomination of Dana M. Douglas, of Louisiana, to be United States Circuit Judge for the Fifth Circuit.
In addition to the Respect for Marriage Act, the House is expected to take up the James M. Inhofe National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023 and the Disaster Assistance for Rural Communities Act.
The House will next convene for votes at 6:30 P.M. on Monday, December 12th, and the Senate at 3:00 P.M. on Monday, December 12th.
