The final year of the 118th Congress began with the House of Representatives gaveling in today. The Senate is set to return tomorrow. At the top of the agenda in both the House and Senate is reaching a funding deal to avoid a partial government shutdown set to happen on January 19th.
In addition, the House Homeland Security Committee will hold a hearing on the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Wednesday. Meanwhile, the committees overseeing the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden are expected to move a resolution holding Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress after the President’s son failed to respond to a subpoena and scheduled deposition in mid-December. Read more about what’s happening in this busy January, here.
Lastly, negotiators in the Senate are expected to roll out an agreement on a supplementary funding bill for Ukraine, Israel, and U.S. southern border security later this week or early next week.
TOP LINE SPENDING PLANS.
Late Sunday, House and Senate leaders reached an agreement regarding the top-line spending number for funding the government for the rest of the fiscal year. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) announced $773 billion for non-defense discretionary spending and $886 billion for defense – for a total of $1.659 trillion.
House conservatives have already balked at the agreement, which is about $100 billion above the spending cap set by 2023’s Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA) – former Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s deal to suspend the debt limit until 2025 – which set the funding limit at $1.590 trillion in total. The House Freedom Caucus blasted the deal in a post on X (formerly Twitter) saying, “It’s even worse than we thought… This is total failure.”
Because it is, perhaps intentionally so, allowing Speaker Johnson to go back, try to shave off $100bn and call it a[n attempted] victory. In reality, America’s “fiscal responsibility” will be no better than last year under McCarthy.
THE ‘POLICY RIDERS’.
When House and Senate negotiators hammered out the FRA in June of 2023, former Speaker McCarthy made a handshake agreement with the Biden White House regarding the clawbacks of IRS and coronavirus funding which had been appropriated as part of Biden’s Inflationary Reduction Act. The handshake agreement — which was not contained in the final legislative language — stipulated the White House could redirect the clawed-back funds to other non-defense discretionary programs even though it would violate the spending cap by about $100 billion.
Speaker Johnson has tried to sell the agreement to his fellow Republicans by arguing that it — for the time being — preserves the conservative policy riders they added to the House appropriations bills. In a dear colleague letter, Johnson said by moving the process forward, Republicans will have the chance to “fight for the important policy riders included in our House FY24 bills.” Despite Johnson apparently believing some of the riders might make it into law, Senate Democrats have made it clear they will strip out all of the House policy provisions.
SHUTDOWN LOOMS.
While Congressional leadership may have an agreement on top-line spending numbers, they have only a week and a half to move four appropriations bills to avoid a partial government shutdown. The laddered continuing resolution passed late last year sets two government funding deadlines: January 19th and February 2nd.
Congress must pass appropriations for Agriculture, Energy and Water, MilCon-VA, and Transportation-HUD by January 19th or face a partial shutdown. With House conservatives broadly opposed to the top-line spending agreement, moving each appropriations bill could prove difficult for Speaker Johnson. Each funding bill will require the House to pass an initial rule of debate, and the House Democrats have traditionally voted en bloc against every legislative rule when Republicans control the House (and vice versa when Democrats control the legislative body).
Without Democrat votes on the rule for debate, it would only take a handful of House conservatives to defeat the rule entirely and prevent each appropriations bill from coming to the floor. This puts Johnson in a difficult position as he’s promised to “fight” for the conservative policy riders contained in the House bills. With almost certain conservative opposition to the rule votes, he’ll need to move each funding bill under ‘suspension’ — circumventing the need for a rule vote. To do this, however, the Speaker will need House Democrat votes — which he’s unlikely to get as long as the riders remain in the legislative text.
If Johnson sticks to his guns and tries to preserve the policy riders, a partial shutdown would seem fairly likely. On the other hand, if Johnson caves to House Democrats and strips the policy riders, he may end up serving an even shorter tenure as Speaker than his predecessor Kevin McCarthy.
MAYORKAS IMPEACHMENT.
Amidst the government funding fight, the House Homeland Security Committee, chaired by Rep. Mark Green (R-TN), will convene on Wednesday to hold an initial hearing for the impeachment of President Biden’s Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. The committee is set to hear from four witnesses: Attorney General Austin Knudsen (R-MT), Attorney General Gentner Drummond (R-OK), Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R-MO), and Prof. Emeritus Frank O. Bowman III of the University of Missouri School of Law.
House Republicans say Mayorkas has failed in his constitutional duties and is responsible for the growing illegal immigration crisis at the southern border. Chairman Green is expected to move on passing an impeachment resolution fairly quickly, meaning there will likely be only a handful of hearings held by his committee.
For the most part, House Republicans appear united on moving forward with the Mayorkas impeachment. With voter concerns over the border invasion only increasing, electorally vulnerable Democrats in both the House and Senate may be willing to turn on Biden’s Homeland Security Secretary — making him the first cabinet secretary impeached in nearly 150 years.
Last week, The National Pulse reported that Noah Bookbinder — the president and CEO of the leftist law-fare group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington — was scrubbed from the Department of Homeland Security website just before the New Year holiday. Bookbinder, who was personally appointed to the Homeland Security Advisory Council by Sec. Mayorkas, oversaw efforts in Colorado to remove former President Donald Trump from the state’s primary ballot while also serving in the Biden government.
WHERE’S HUNTER?
The three House committees overseeing the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden will move a contempt of Congress resolution against the President’s son, Hunter Biden, later this week. On December 13, Hunter Biden was supposed to appear — per a Congressional subpoena — before the committees for a closed-door deposition. Instead of appearing, Hunter Biden held a press conference on the Senate side of the U.S. Capitol grounds where he denounced the impeachment inquiry and demanded a public hearing — stating he would not appear for the closed-door deposition.
If the contempt resolution is adopted by the full House, a federal felony charge for Hunter Biden will be referred to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. Stephen K. Bannon and Peter Navarro, both advisors to former President Trump, currently face jail time after House Democrats referred contempt charges to the Department of Justice (DOJ) when they ‘failed’ to cooperate with Congressional subpoenas during the sham January 6th Committee hearings. Regarding Hunter Biden, however, House Republicans are concerned President Biden’s DOJ may be less than willing to pursue federal felony charges.
UKRAINE & ISRAEL.
Capping off an already busy several days, negotiators in the Senate could roll out a Ukraine, Israel, and border security supplemental funding bill. Sen. James Lankford (R-OK), one of the negotiators on the supplemental, said he believes the legislative text could be ready later this week. Members of the Senate will likely be briefed on Tuesday or Wednesday on the proposed language.
Even if the Senate negotiators can finalize legislative text, the bill’s path to passage is uncertain. There may be enough opposition among Senate Republicans to sustain a filibuster, effectively killing the legislation. Even if a coalition of Democrats and moderate Republicans can break the filibuster and pass the supplemental, it will almost certainly face even greater obstacles in the House. The senior Senator from Oklahoma is expected to pitch the supplemental deal to the conservative House Republican Study Committee.
Acknowledging the likely opposition, Sen. Lankford said on Fox News Sunday he hopes House Republicans won’t reject the supplemental funding bill out-of-hand and instead work to improve it while acknowledging it “makes real progress on the border… and then keep going for more.”
