With the House now in recess until August 31st, the Senate has a full agenda during its potential two-week sprint to August recess. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) is under pressure from competing parts of his conference — and the White House — over the SAVE America Act, reconciliation 3.0, the NDAA, government funding and the midterm elections.
Most notably, the Senate is expected to hold an initial procedural vote this week on the vehicle for the long-stalled and newly revised Russia sanctions bill. This will be just hours after a bipartisan group of senators is slated to meet with Ukrainian Leader Volodymyr Zelensky while he’s in town for former Senator Lindsey Graham’s funeral services Tuesday. There will also be votes this week on the latest nominations package, a process that takes two weeks of floor time without a time agreement. Plus, it is expected Leader Thune will force a procedural vote at some point on crypto market structure legislation, regardless of whether Democrats back a proposed deal on ethics restraints. Bipartisan Senate talks over funding federal agencies past the September 30th deadline are trending in the right direction and Leader Thune has told appropriators he wants a bill ready to go this week, and that remains the expectation. Unlike the House-passed CR, this version is expected to include most — but not all — of the anomalies the White House requested.
For today, the Senate is scheduled to hold a procedural vote on Jay Clayton’s nomination for Director of National Intelligence. Votes are set as well for Tuesday night after former Senator Graham’s memorial services. The first will be a vote to confirm Clayton.
