What lawmakers decide not to tackle can matter just as much what they do

Terry Gerton Let’s start with good news. We have a past continuing resolution that will fund the government through December 11th. Doesn’t promise no shutdowns after that, but at least we’ll get through Thanksgiving this time. But it wasn’t an easy path. Kind of walk us through what happened over the last week to get that across the finish line.

Mitchell Miller Yeah, it gets really kind of complicated, especially when a lot of people on both sides of the aisle really wanted to get this continuing resolution passed, and that includes the top appropriators, Tom Cole (R) from Oklahoma and Rosa DeLauro (D) from Connecticut, both of them on the same page here saying even though they don’t love continuing resolutions, they thought, okay, we’ll get this passed and we’ll get it through December 11th so we have federal spending and the lights stay on in the government. But, related to that, there was also a series of other GOP bills that many conservatives had concerns about in connection with the continuing resolution, and they all got kind of tied in together. Some of the things that are included in that continuing resolution. One of them that angered conservatives is this change to how the government deals with grants going out by the Trump administration, and the Trump administration essentially wants to bypass a lot of the guidelines in connection with getting these funds out. And that really concerned Democrats who worried that the Trump administration was going to do more in this area. Republicans, on the other hand, didn’t like the fact that the Senate had changed that language to take it out. So that was one stumbling block. And then you have these very small things, but they cause bigger problems. One of them, believe it or not, and it’s been tracked pretty heavily, is the battle over intoxicating hemp products. Some in states where those businesses sell them wanted that to be remain in the continuing resolution It’s a ban that’s going into effect. Others said no, this is dangerous to kids. People are going into gas stations and convenience stores and they don’t want this to take place. So we don’t wanna delay on the ban. So those are just like a couple of examples of how things get tangled up but ultimately the votes were there of course, it was overwhelmingly passed. But that led to more complications on other bills, which we can get to. But the good news is, as you mentioned, there is going to be funding through December 11th. The bad news is of course, that’s the proverbial kicking the can down the road and we know that that’s going to cause a very interesting lame duck session to say the least.

Terry Gerton Exactly. Well, so we’re gonna stop and celebrate for a minute, but now move on because some of those concerns that you mentioned, discussions between the different party factions really have come to light over this last week when the House was back, but the Senate was not. And it just seemed like it was a food fight up in the House on all kinds of stuff. What is going on up there? Is this like positioning for the midterm talking points or people trying to be in line for gavels in the next Congress? What are they all fighting about?

Mitchell Miller I think that’s a really great point. A lot of it is pointing to what you can say going into the midterm elections. And conservatives from the House Freedom Caucus, we know all of the time, they stand up and say they don’t like certain provisions in major pieces of legislation. They also wanted to get a resolution passed, for example, to condemn socialism, which of course is a messaging piece of legislation aimed at democratic socialists heading into the midterms. And what really caused a big political kerfuffle on the Democratic side was something that sounds kind of obscure, but when they were voting on the rule, which basically sets up this package of what was four bills, including the resolution to condemn socialism, generally the opposing party never, ever votes for the rule and makes all the pressure go on the party in power, in this case, of course, the Republicans. But what happened was two Democrats, Jared Golden of Maine and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington State both voted for the rule and their two votes allowed that vote on socialism to move forward. And that really angered the Democratic leadership, Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and others, because this is something that is just not done, as former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said. So they had a big, as they like to call these things, family discussion about this about whether they will be penalized. They kind of held off on that for now. But it just shows the sensitivity as we head into the midterm elections. And of course, that’s a foreshadowing, because if the Democrats are able to retake the House, these are the kind of issues that Hakeem Jeffries, if he were to become house speaker, will have to deal with. And, of course the current House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) knows all about these battles all too well.

Terry Gerton Mitchell Miller is the Capitol Hill correspondent for WTOP. Mitchell, you mentioned the midterms there. And one of the interesting parts of this week’s discussion was that the House decided to not take three weeks to work in September, but two so they could go home and campaign. Makes some of us to scratch our heads. There seems like an awful lot of work to do, and a lot of it now will get left undone.

Mitchell Miller Right. And a lot of Republican lawmakers, frankly, are scratching their heads because there was, remember there was a lot of talk just a few months ago about all these things that the GOP was going to try to do ahead of the midterms to try to show that they’re addressing affordability issues and other things that they worry about as they head into the election. And instead, we have a point now where the House is only going to be in session four days between now and November 3rd. Obviously nothing is going to get done and some may not even be here for those four days. That was a problem last week, in fact. There were nearly a dozen lawmakers from both parties who didn’t even show up for any of the four-day session last week, so there’s clearly not going to be anything getting done on the House side. And then even though the Senate is coming back on the 14th, there’s still a lot of questions about what they can actually do. And of course, some of the hugest issues that are hanging out there, one of them is the National Defense Authorization Act, which has not been fully approved, and that has to get done. They’re talking about maybe pushing that back later into the year. And for all the talk about regular order that we heard all year long about the committees getting bills in front of everybody, well, here we are again, and the Senate has not passed any appropriations bills. The House has only passed a handful of appropriations bill. So there is going to be a huge legislative pileup when we get to that December 11th date and they start to get into that lame duck session.

Terry Gerton It just makes you wonder if there are enough hours in the day to tackle all of these topics. I mean, because there are other things that we didn’t even touch on here, like the Russia sanctions bill that the Senate left for the House to take up, data centers, affordability, all of those topics, and none of them are going to actually get the legislative attention that our members of Congress have promised.

Mitchell Miller Right. And there’s really concern, you know, in connection with, for example, getting confirmed people in the military. In the army, there’s a lot of Republicans and Democrats worried about the fact that the army is essentially being hollowed out right now with all of the reforms being put together by Pete Hegseth. Many wonder what is going to happen, especially since we’re still technically in a war with Iran. So as you mentioned. All these things are still hanging out there, and they’re going to be out there for the next coming weeks and months, and they are only going to intensify as we get into the later part of the calendar.

Terry Gerton Well, maybe we’ll get some clue about where these are headed at the Republicans’ midterm convention next week in Dallas. What are you expecting to hear or see there?

Mitchell Miller Well, that’s really interesting because the rank-and-file Republicans, although several are publicly saying that they are looking forward to this, that they’re going to re-energize the party heading into the midterms, a lot of people also quietly are saying on the Republican side that this is really all about President Trump, and that he wants to make it mainly about him. And then he thinks that by pushing himself out there once again that they will get more people out to the polls. But quietly, a lot of Republicans are saying that they’re not going to attend. They’re going to be back in their home districts. They feel that they can do more when they’re back in the districts campaigning than if they were to do these big television events, essentially, in Texas. And then on the Democratic side, they’re going be doing their own messaging and having their candidates out in districts throughout the week. So it’s going to interesting to see if this does really pump up some energy within the GOP because certainly they’re facing a lot of political headwinds right now, or whether it just kind of takes place and everybody just moves on and we go to a new stage of the campaign.