Both the House and Senate are back from recess this week to begin a busy three-week period before Easter that’s expected to focus on Republicans’ budget reconciliation agenda, including extending and expanding tax cuts and tightening immigration policy. The top items on the House agenda this week will include more measures to overturn Biden administration rules as there are plenty of policies from the Biden administration that Republicans still want to roll back, including energy efficiency regulations related to walk-in coolers and freezers, as well as for commercial refrigerators and freezers more broadly. The House is scheduled to consider joint resolutions this week to roll back both of those rules, with the Senate likely to follow suit. Republicans argue that the Biden standards are not feasible and that they restrict consumer choices. The Senate will continue to vote on more of President Donald Trump’s nominations including the nominees to lead the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration. With a stopgap spending law now in effect through September 30th, the Republican majorities in both the House and Senate can fully turn their attention to their budget reconciliation agenda.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota), Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) and key committee chairs from the Senate and House will meet Tuesday in hope of reaching a breakthrough on President Trump’s stalled agenda, including border security, energy and tax reform. Leader Thune has said he is hoping the Senate will act on a budget resolution in the next three weeks that would lay the groundwork for moving a package later this year to secure the border, expand domestic oil and gas drilling, boost defense spending by at least $100 billion and extend President Trump’s expiring 2017 tax cuts. Speaker Johnson has set a goal of getting that “one big, beautiful bill” to Trump’s desk by the end of April or — at the latest — by Memorial Day, but many believe that ambitious timeline is unrealistic, and that getting it potentially passed by the end of July is a more attainable target. The reconciliation process is critical because it will allow the legislation to dodge a Senate filibuster, ensuring that Democrats cannot block the measure in the upper chamber. But the measure will also have to meet various rules required for budget reconciliation packages. Many differences remain between the two chambers with the House proposal calling for cutting taxes by $4.5 trillion and reducing federal spending by $2 trillion over the next decade, but several Senate Republicans are balking at an instruction calling for $880 billion in mandatory spending cuts that they fear would hit Medicaid hard.
The Senate convened at 10:00 A.M. and is expected to take up Confirmation of Executive Calendar #38, Michael Kratsios, to be Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy and a Motion to invoke cloture on Executive Calendar #44, Jayanta Bhattacharya, to be Director of the National Institutes of Health.
The House also met at 10:00 A.M. and will take up H. Res. __ – Providing for consideration of the joint resolution (H.J. Res. 24) providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Department of Energy relating to ‘‘Energy Conservation Program: Energy Conservation Standards for Walk-In Coolers and Walk-In Freezers.” The House is also expected to begin consideration of H.R. 1048 – DETERRENT Act and one postponed suspension, H.R. 1534 – IMPACT Act.
