Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) announced in a Dear Colleague letter this morning that Senate committees will hold hearings on the House Republicans legislation on the debt limit and spending cuts that passed the House last week. The Senate Budget Committee will hold the first hearing on Thursday which will feature Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics and leaders of the Environmental Defense Fund and the Solar Energy Industries Association. Leader Schumer said the Senate, “will show the public what this bill truly is” with a series of hearings by relevant committees designed to highlight how the Republican sponsored legislation will hurt working families and the poor. The House passed bill would increase the debt ceiling through 2024 while setting discretionary federal government spending at 2022 levels for the 2024 fiscal year and capping spending growth at 1%. Other deficit-cutting measures in the bill include clawing back unspent COVID aid, canceling student loan debt forgiveness, reducing restrictions on new energy projects and repealing Inflation Reduction Act tax credits and IRS funding. The House GOP measure was aimed at boosting Republicans’ efforts to negotiate with Democrats as the country approaches its default deadline as soon as June. But the White House has said it will not negotiate a debt ceiling increase and will accept only a clean proposal to raise the nation’s borrowing limit. Following passage of the GOP bill, President Joe Biden told reporters Wednesday that he would be “happy to meet with McCarthy, but not on whether or not the debt limit gets extended. That’s not negotiable.” Treasury Department officials are expected to update the public soon on the “X date,” before which Congress will need to pass a debt limit lift to avoid default, in the coming days. That will ramp up the pressure, but it’s not yet clear what will get leaders to budge.
While the House is in recess this week until Tuesday, May 9th, the Senate will convene at 3:00 P.M. and will resume consideration of the nomination of Anthony Devos Johnstone to be United States Circuit Judge for the Ninth Circuit, post-cloture. This week, the Senate Judiciary Committee is also holding a hearing Tuesday focused on Supreme Court ethics after reports by ProPublica revealed Justice Clarence Thomas went on luxury trips with and paid for by conservative billionaire donor Harlan Crow. The hearing, scheduled for 10 A.M. Eastern time, is expected to “examine the need for enforceable ethics reforms for the Supreme Court, following numerous revelations of Justices’ conduct that has fallen short of the ethical standards the American people expect from public servants,” according to the panel.
Adam S. Olsen, Washington, D.C.
