It's left tens of thousands of Wisconsinites wondering if they'll head into the holiday season without paychecks.
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Wisconsin's federal lawmakers are blaming the other side of the aisle for getting in the way of extending the farm bill.
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Congress has until Dec. 20 to strike a funding deal to keep the federal government functioning.
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U.S. Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger testifies during a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on the Legislative Branch hearing at the U.S. Capitol on May 22, 2024, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — U.S. Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger testified Wednesday that more than 700 threats against members of Congress were made during the last month alone, with at least 50 cases of people making false 911 calls in an attempt to get police teams to respond to lawmakers’ homes, often called “swatting.”
Manger, who took over the police department following the Jan. 6 attack, said the agency has done a relatively good job bolstering security at the Capitol building during the last few years, but needs more officers and money to address lawmakers’ security when they are back home or at offsite events.
Manger pointed to the dignitary protection division, which is responsible for keeping congressional leadership safe wherever they go, as “woefully understaffed.”
“We provide the protection at the level it needs to be. But you do that through officers working double shifts and averaging … 50 hours of overtime every pay period,” Manger said.
The division that protects leadership currently holds about 250 officers, but Manger pressed for that to be doubled to at least 500.
“And not only can we provide protection for the leadership 24/7, but when we have people that have threats against them that require us to stand up temporary details, we can do that,” Manger said. “Because right now, when we do it, we’re robbing Peter to pay Paul. We’re yanking somebody off another detail to stand up a detail to help someone for a temporary threat situation.”
There are numerous situations, he testified, where if USCP had more officers it could better protect lawmakers both on and off Capitol Hill. For example, USCP needs more than the 20 or so agents it currently has investigating threats against members of Congress.
Threats against lawmakers have been on the rise for years, but are having increasingly dire consequences. Just this week a woman in Georgia was killed in what local police described as a “tragic chain of events” after an email falsely claimed there was a bomb in the mailbox at Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s home there.
Manger said during the hearing in the Senate Rules Committee that lawmakers need to raise USCP’s spending levels to allow it to continue holding 12 recruiting classes per year of 25 officers each for the next few years.
The mandatory retirement age for USCP should also be raised from 60 to 65 to match the “tweak” the Secret Service holds that allows it to keep senior officers working above the ceiling of 57 years old for federal law enforcement, which Manger called “shameful” because he believes it is too low.
“We have people that are in the prime of their career at that age and they got to go. And so, you know, I’ve been able to get the Capitol Police Board to agree to extend it to the age 60. And I have several officers that I’ve spoken with just in the last month who are hitting 60 years old, and they said, ‘Chief, I don’t want to go,’” Manger said. “And you look at them, and they look like they’re 35 and they certainly can still do the job, physically, mentally, and they’re some of the best cops you’d ever want to work with. But I have no ability to hold on to them.”
The U.S. Senate unanimously passed the Invent Here, Make Here Act on Tuesday. According to Baldwin’s office, the bipartisan bill would ensure that federally-funded innovations are manufactured in the U.S. and not in adversarial countries.
The post Tammy Baldwin, JD Vance bill on taxpayer-funded inventions passes US Senate appeared first on WPR.
South Dakota Sen. John Thune speaks to reporters after being elected Republican leader during a closed-door, secret ballot election held inside the old Senate chamber in the U.S. Capitol building on Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024. At right is Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, a West Virginia Republican elected as the Republican Policy Committee chair. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — Republicans in the Nov. 5 election took over the White House, the U.S. Senate and as of late Wednesday, the House, after calls were made in enough races to project a majority.
They are expressing high hopes for unified control of government. But before they’ll be able to celebrate enacting sweeping changes to the country’s tax code or overhauling the health insurance marketplace, they’ll need to broker agreement between centrist lawmakers and far-right members in Congress.
More often than not, those two factions of the GOP hold significantly different ideas about how to draft legislation and strong opinions about whether to amend it on the floor.
Keeping everyone on the same page will be crucial for Republican leaders once the new Congress begins Jan. 3, especially since they have just three votes to spare in the Senate and a razor-thin majority in the House.
States Newsroom looked at what’s ahead for Republicans as they begin sorting through where to make changes to U.S. law in seven key policy areas:
Nearly every Republican politician campaigned on addressing the country’s tax structure, making it one of the first issues the party is expected to take up when the next session of Congress begins.
The GOP will likely use the complicated budget reconciliation process to address the tax code, the same way lawmakers did in 2017 when they passed their signature tax law during President-elect Donald Trump’s first term in office.
That reconciliation process would allow Republicans to avoid the Senate’s 60-vote legislative filibuster that would otherwise require them to get Democratic support. But the process has strict rules and requires a marathon amendment voting session in the Senate that’s often called a vote-a-rama.
Some provisions in Republicans’ original tax law have already expired or will do so in the coming months, giving the GOP incentives to jump through the many hoops that come with the reconciliation process.
Extending the expiring provisions will bring along a hefty price tag, however.
The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget wrote in an analysis released in late September that extending the individual and estate tax elements in the law would increase the deficit by $3.9 trillion through 2035. Republicans opting to extend or bring back tax code changes for business would likely increase the deficit to $4.8 trillion.
Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, expressed concerns at the time about lawmakers ignoring or diminishing the deficit impact.
“There will undoubtedly be efforts to pretend that extending the tax cuts is free – obviously this is not the case,” she said. “Extending policies that are scheduled to expire — and were scored as expiring — would clearly add to the national debt.”
MacGuineas added that lawmakers “should consider carefully which parts of the TCJA are working, which parts aren’t, and if they want to extend some parts, how to responsibly extend them without increasing the debt beyond current law.”
Republicans are expected to hold votes on legislation addressing border security and immigration after much of their campaign for Congress focused on those two areas.
Whether they’ll be able to do that through the reconciliation process with only GOP support or through the traditional legislative process, which requires bipartisanship in the Senate, will depend on how exactly they write the bill and what budget impacts the various provisions will have.
Immigration and border security legislation would fail to comply with a reconciliation rule in the Senate, also known as the Byrd Rule, if it produces a change in federal revenues or spending that is deemed “merely incidental” by the Senate parliamentarian.
While the requirement is vague, it could apply to several items that don’t have big price tags when considered as part of the multi-trillion-dollar federal budget.
For example, Democrats’ efforts to raise the federal minimum wage as part of the reconciliation process in 2021 were deemed “merely incidental” by the Senate parliamentarian and removed from the bill.
Trump has already laid out his wish list for an immigration-related bill he wants Congress to send to his desk.
Trump reposted campaign videos on social media in early September requesting Congress pass legislation to prevent future presidents from using executive authority to grant humanitarian parole — something the Biden administration has used to allow more than 1 million people to obtain work permits and live in the United States temporarily.
Trump has called the use of parole authority “abuse,” but it’s been used by presidents since 1956, during the Eisenhower administration.
Trump, who campaigned on mass deportations of immigrants without proper legal status, is also expected to ask Congress to foot the bill for his promise to deport more than 13 million people.
Getting any immigration-related policy to the president-elect’s desk will be daunting since it’s been almost four decades since Congress overhauled U.S. immigration law.
“The last big immigration bill was passed in 1986 when Ronald Reagan was president and both houses of Congress were held by Democrats,” according to an analysis from the nonpartisan Brookings Institution. “A smaller bill was passed in 1990 when George H.W. Bush was president and both houses of Congress were still controlled by Democrats.”
Earlier this year, a bipartisan border security and immigration bill was brokered by Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy, Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Lankford and Arizona independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema.
The trio of senators spent months negotiating the particulars of the deal only to have it scuttled after Trump told GOP members he didn’t want the legislation to pass.
That legislation could be used as a starting point if Republicans are unable to move an immigration bill through the reconciliation process and want to get a bill past the Senate’s 60-vote legislative filibuster.
Tariffs could become one point of contention between Republicans in Congress and the Trump administration.
The president-elect has vowed to stack tariffs of at least 10% on nearly all goods entering the country, raising alarm bells with economists and free-trade Republicans about the impact that would have on consumer prices.
Trump said in mid-October at the Economic Club of Chicago that he hoped to implement tariffs on foreign-made products as high as 100% or 200%.
“The higher the tariff, the more likely it is that the company will come into the United States, and build a factory in the United States so it doesn’t have to pay the tariff,” Trump said, rejecting the premise that high tariffs could harm Americans.
Mary Lovely, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, told States Newsroom in an October interview that imposing tariffs could risk “starting a trade war with the entire world.”
Lovely’s research with economist Kimberly Clausing, also of PIIE, found that Trump’s threats to slap tariffs as high as 20% on all foreign products, combined with his threats of 60% tariffs on all Chinese goods, could cost the typical American household over $2,600 annually.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said repeatedly during the final weeks of the campaign that he wants to overhaul the 2010 health care law that most people refer to as the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare.
He hasn’t shared details about what aspects of that law he wants to end or change, but said during a late October interview on Fox Business that he wants to address health outcomes.
“I said the ACA, unfortunately, is deeply ingrained in our health care system now,” Johnson said. “Do we need further improvements? Absolutely. We need to expand quality of care, access to care and obviously lower the cost of health care.”
Republicans used the budget reconciliation process to try to repeal and replace the ACA in 2017, but were unsuccessful, largely due to the late Arizona Sen. John McCain rejecting the bill.
Even with the budget reconciliation process to get Republicans around the Senate’s 60-vote legislative filibuster, it will be extremely difficult for leaders to get the party unified on any health care bill of that magnitude.
Republicans using the budget reconciliation process for tax policy and health care would take up two of the three opportunities they’ll have to adopt budget resolutions with reconciliation instructions during the 119th Congress.
GOP leaders could try for a round three, though once all is said and done with the first two reconciliation bills, Republicans might need to shift their attention toward the 2026 midterm campaigns.
Republican lawmakers have argued legislation is needed to bar noncitizens from voting in federal elections, even though it is already illegal and rarely happens. The party is expected to try again next Congress, once it holds a majority in both chambers of Congress.
The GOP House passed a bill this summer that would have required proof of citizenship to register to vote, but the Democratic-controlled Senate never acted on it.
Trump wrote on social media that he would demand that voter ID laws and proof of citizenship be required for voting, something that Congress would have to pass, although it’s unclear if such legislation could overcome the 60-vote threshold in the Senate.
The issue is important to Trump, as Johnson traveled to the president-elect’s residence in Palm Beach, Florida, to unveil the House’s intention to pursue the issue.
Republicans campaigned this year on cutting government spending, but have rarely done so when they held the majority in both chambers of Congress.
The challenge lies in how government spending is approved and how much the various departments and agencies require to function.
During fiscal 2023, the federal government spent $6.1 trillion, with $3.4 trillion going to mandatory programs, like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Those programs run on autopilot, so lawmakers don’t need to negotiate the particulars every year the way they do other programs.
An additional $1.7 trillion was spent on so-called discretionary programs, which are funded through Congress’ annual appropriations process. That funding went to programs categorized as either nondefense, which received $917 billion, or defense, which got $805 billion.
The nondefense funding goes to several departments, including Agriculture, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Interior, Justice, State and Transportation. Smaller agencies, like NASA and the National Science Foundation, are also funded through nondefense accounts.
Republicans have proposed cuts in the past, but members of the party who understand the federal ledger often explain that if members really want to address the government spending more than it takes in, they’ll have to address Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
The math, otherwise, won’t work.
Republicans could make tweaks when they write their reconciliation bills, though they’ll need those to comply with the Byrd Rule and not have a “merely incidental” impact on the federal ledger.
Having secured unified GOP control of government, Trump’s sweeping vision to “save American education” could set the stage for significant changes in U.S. education policy.
The president-elect has vowed to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education and said he wants to move education “back to the states.” States and local governments bear much of the responsibility for funding K-12 schools, but the Department of Education handles Pell Grants for college students who demonstrate financial need and enforces civil rights cases, among other things.
Congress going along with plans to eliminate the department could have profound impacts on the billions of dollars in funding the agency provides for low-income K-12 schools, special education and federal student aid.
Trump also vowed to roll back updated Title IX regulations on his first day back in office.
President Joe Biden unveiled the final rule for Title IX in April, which strengthens federal protections for LGBTQ+ students and “protects against discrimination based on sex stereotypes, sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics,” according to the Education Department.
GOP members on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce have criticized the new Title IX rules and are likely to fall in step with Trump’s wishes to roll back the regulations.
Trump has also criticized the Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness efforts, dubbing them “not even legal.” He could discontinue the Biden administration’s new student loan repayment plan known as Saving on a Valuable Education, or SAVE. The plan is currently on pause due to legal challenges from Republican-led states.
Last year, Senate Republicans tried to strike down the rule.
Like Trump, Republicans have focused on “parental rights” in education. House Republicans passed their own bill on the issue last year.
Republicans are likely to continue scrutinizing higher education institutions from diversity initiatives to college students protesting the war in Gaza.
A GOP measure that would bar accrediting organizations from requiring colleges and universities to adopt diversity, equity and inclusion policies as a condition of accreditation passed the House in September.
Shauneen Miranda and Ashley Murray contributed to this report.
In January, Republicans will have control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate along with the Presidency. Wisconsin Democratic Rep. Gwen Moore weighs in on some of the tax proposals likely to come up in the new Congress.
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Federal legislation seeking to require lap/shoulder seatbelts on school buses as well as stability control systems and automatic braking is before Congress for the fifth time since 2018.
Tennessee Rep. Steve Cohen, who co-introduced each previous House Democrat iteration as companion bills to efforts led by Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, reintroduced the School Bus Safety Act on Tuesday in the House. The legislation would implement recommendations issued by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) require three-point seatbelts in all school buses.
To date, NHTSA has only required lap/shoulder seatbelts in school buses that weigh 10,000 pounds or less. Meanwhile, it recommends the occupant restraint systems but only when a school district can afford to purchase and install them.
“There is no more precious cargo than school-aged children entrusted by their parents for a ride to school. The commonsense measures recommended by the NTSB and called for in this legislation will save young lives,” Cohen said in a statement. “We’ve seen too many deaths and serious injuries in school bus accidents in Tennessee and elsewhere, and it is past time we act to save young lives.”
Blue Bird became the first school bus manufacturer to voluntarily equip all its school buses with lap/shoulder seatbelts and at no additional cost, unless a school district customer specifies it does not want the systems.
NTSB applauded the School Bus Safety Act reintroduction.
“School buses are often touted as the safest vehicles on our roads, and yet the NTSB continues to investigate crashes that result in preventable fatalities and injuries involving children, adults who accompany them, and other road users,” said NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy. “Every school bus crash serves as a painful reminder of the cost of inaction. … The NTSB will not rest until the number of lives lost to school bus tragedies is zero.”
In addition to seatbelts, the bill would require automatic emergency braking, electronic stability controls, event data recorders, firewalls separating the engine compartment from the passenger compartment, and fire suppression systems for engine fires.
Duckworth was joined by Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio in reintroducing the bill in the Senate last September. It has remained in the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.
Related: Congress Takes Latest Crack at School Bus Safety Act
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Related: OEM Blue Bird Featured on CBS for Safety Technology, Three-Point Seatbelts
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Congress is in recess in the leadup to Election Day, but will return afterward for a lame-duck session. Pictured is the U.S. Capitol on March 14, 2024. (Jennifer Shutt | States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — Members of Congress left Capitol Hill last week to focus their attention on the campaign trail during the six weeks leading up to Election Day, leaving much of their work unfinished.
The Republican House and Democratic Senate are scheduled to remain on recess until Nov. 12, though the urgent needs created in the wake of Hurricane Helene, which are fully funded for the moment, could bring the chambers back into session before then.
When lawmakers do return to Washington, D.C., they’ll need to address the must-pass legislation they’ve left on autopilot instead of negotiating new bipartisan compromises.
So far this year, lawmakers have pushed off reaching brokering agreement on must-pass measures like the farm bill as well as this year’s batch of government funding bills and the annual defense policy legislation.
There are also a handful of measures that have passed one chamber with broad bipartisan support, but haven’t been taken up on the other side of the Capitol that leadership could decide to move forward during November or December.
For example, an interesting combination of senators, led by Connecticut Democrat Richard Blumenthal and Tennessee Republican Marsha Blackburn, are advocating for House Republican leaders to hold votes on a pair of online safety bills designed to better protect children from the darker side of the internet.
The rail safety bill drafted by a bipartisan group of senators from Ohio and Pennsylvania after the train derailment in East Palestine remains unaddressed following more than a year of intransigence.
And legislation to reauthorize the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, or RECA, which passed the Senate on a broadly bipartisan vote earlier this year, sits on a shelf collecting dust in the House.
Cancer victims, Indigenous communities and many others have pressed House GOP leadership to hold a vote to reauthorize the program after it expired this summer, but they have avoided it due to cost.
Lawmakers interviewed by States Newsroom and congressional leaders all indicated the outcome of the November elections will have significant sway on what Congress approves during the five-week lame-duck session that spans November and December.
All interviews took place before Hurricane Helene made landfall and Israel was directly attacked by Iran, both of which are likely to be at the top of congressional leaders’ to-do lists.
Senate Minority Whip John Thune said it’s “hard to say” what, if anything, Congress will approve during the lame-duck session.
“I think a lot will be shaped by what happens in November,” the South Dakota Republican said.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said just a day before Hurricane Helene made landfall that Democrats would advocate for passing natural disaster response funding previously requested by the Biden administration.
“Extreme weather events are on the rise and they affect everyone — in blue states, purple states and red states,” Jeffries said. “This is not a partisan issue, it’s an American issue in terms of being there, in times of need for everyday Americans, who have had their lives and livelihood upended.”
Other House Democratic priorities during the lame duck include approving the dozen full-year government funding bills that were supposed to be completed before Oct. 1, the defense policy bill that had the same deadline and the farm bill, which is more than a year overdue.
Missouri GOP Sen. Josh Hawley said he “sure hopes” the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act reauthorization bill reaches the president’s desk before the end of the year.
He didn’t rule out lobbying to attach it to a must-pass government funding bill, but said the real hurdle is House GOP leaders.
“It doesn’t need help in the Senate. It just needs the House,” Hawley said. “I’ve had good, productive conversations with Speaker [Mike] Johnson in the last few weeks, and I appreciate his personal engagement on this, and I hope that that will lead to action.”
Haley said the House allowing RECA to expire, preventing people who qualify for the program from receiving benefits, was “outrageous.”
Senate Armed Services Chair Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat, said staff would work during October to bridge the differences between the two chambers on the annual defense policy bill, called the National Defense Authorization Act.
Those staff-level talks will lay the foundation for Republicans and Democrats to meet once they return to Capitol Hill following the elections.
“We have to be ready when we come back to go right to the ‘Big Four’ meeting,” he said, referring to the top leaders in both chambers. “That’s our objective.”
Reed said many of the differences between the House and the Senate aren’t typical Defense Department policy issues per se, but are “more political, cultural, social.”
Congress may begin to debate additional military and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine this year, though that’s more likely to happen next year, Reed said.
Senate Agriculture Committee Chair Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) said she was making a “big push” for the House and Senate to reach agreement on the farm bill in the months ahead, though she cautioned talks don’t actually constitute a conference.
“I wouldn’t call it a conference; technically to have a conference, you have to have a bill passed by the House and a bill passed by the Senate, which will not happen,” Stabenow said.
“But I believe that there is a way,” Stabenow added. “I believe there’s a way to get a bipartisan bill.”
Arkansas Sen. John Boozman, the top Republican on the Agriculture panel, said lawmakers didn’t need the election results to “start working through our disagreements” on the farm bill, adding there’s some new momentum in talks.
“I think what’s changed is that there is a recognition among members, all members, how difficult it is right now as a farmer,” Boozman said. “So that’s really what’s changed in the last three or four months. It’s developing a real sense of urgency for these folks.”
Iowa Republican Sen. Joni Ernst said the election outcome could influence what lawmakers choose to accomplish during the lame-duck session.
“There’s any number of scenarios, whether it’s NDAA, whether it’s farm bill, whether it’s anything else,” she said. “But it comes down to Leader Schumer.” New York Democrat Chuck Schumer is the majority leader in the Senate.
Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine said he expects Congress will broker some agreement on government funding legislation and the NDAA, but not necessarily anything else.
“In an odd way, the better the Dems do on Nov. 5, the more we’ll get done,” Kaine said. “Because I think if the House is going to flip back to Dem, I think the Rs will say, ‘Well, let’s get a whole lot of stuff done before the House goes down.’ So I think the better we do, the more we’ll get done in the lame duck.”
Kaine said if Democrats do well in the elections, they might not need to approve additional aid for Ukraine this Congress, since that funding can last into next year.
“If we don’t do well in the [elections], we might need to do it in the lame duck,” Kaine said. “So that’ll all depend.”
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The U.S. Capitol on Sept. 23, 2024. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — Congress is on track to approve legislation this week that will give lawmakers until mid-December to broker agreement on the annual government funding bills that were supposed to become law before the end of this month.
The stopgap spending bill, also known as a continuing resolution, has the broad bipartisan support it needs to move through House and Senate votes this week, though senators will need to reach agreement to vote on the legislation before the Oct. 1 deadline when federal spending runs out.
The 49-page bill, released Sunday after weeks of stalemate as House Republicans went at it alone, is no guarantee that Congress will actually wrap up its work on the full-year bills during the next 12 weeks left before this session of Congress is over, since lawmakers can pass as many stopgap spending bills as they want.
Continuing resolutions essentially extend current spending levels and policy for a set amount of time. They are intended to give the House and Senate additional time to conference final versions of the dozen full-year spending bills.
The election results will likely determine whether the Republican House and Democratic Senate move to reach agreement on the full-year bills during the lame-duck session that will begin after Election Day, or kick the can down the road into next year, when the balance of power could be substantially different.
Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, appears inclined toward wrapping up work on the full-year appropriations bills in December, saying during a press conference Tuesday that lawmakers would deal with funding decisions during the lame-duck session.
Johnson signaled that he’s going to try to move all the final, conferenced spending bills across the floor one by one, as opposed to bundling all 12 together in an omnibus or packaging several of the bills together in what’s called a mini-bus. Such large bills regularly draw opposition from conservative Republicans.
“We have broken the Christmas omni and I have no intention of going back to that terrible tradition,” Johnson said. “We don’t want any buses, we’re not going to do any buses.”
The stopgap spending bill Congress is expected to approve this week would set the next deadline for government funding on Dec. 20, four days before Christmas.
Johnson also laid the blame for Congress not completing work on the full-year government funding bills at the feet of Senate Democrats, arguing that the House did all of its work.
The Senate Appropriations Committee approved 11 of the dozen appropriations bills with broadly bipartisan votes, but was unable to garner consensus on the Homeland Security spending bill.
None of those bills have come up on the Senate floor for votes, in part, because it can take weeks in that chamber to move spending bills through the amendment process.
The House Appropriations Committee reported its dozen bills out along party-line votes, without the Democratic support that would be needed for the bills to actually become law during divided government.
House Republican leaders passed five of the bills across the floor, including Defense, Homeland Security, Interior-Environment, Military Construction-VA and State-Foreign Operations.
House GOP leaders attempted to pass the Legislative Branch bill, which provides funding for Congress and its associated agencies, but were unsuccessful. House rules allow that chamber to debate and hold votes on bills in a matter of hours, a much faster pace than the days or weeks it often takes the Senate.
Neither Senate leaders nor House leadership have made any effort to conference the full-year spending bills, a process that is needed to reach the bipartisan, bicameral versions that must pass if Congress wants to avoid another stopgap spending bill in December.
The process typically takes at least six weeks, and with both chambers set to leave town at the end of this week for a six-week break, there likely won’t be enough time to conference all the bills before the mid-December deadline that will be set by the continuing resolution.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, criticized Johnson for trying to pass a six-month stopgap spending bill through the House earlier this month, saying it was a waste of time.
That legislation, which didn’t garner the support to pass, included with it a GOP bill that would have required proof of citizenship to register to vote.
“If both sides keep working together, if we stay away from poison pills and partisan spectacle, then the American people can rest assured there won’t be a government shutdown,” Schumer said. “But we still have more work to do.”
The Biden administration signaled its support for the stopgap spending bill Tuesday, releasing a Statement of Administration Policy calling “for swift passage of this bill in both chambers of the Congress to avoid a costly, unnecessary Government shutdown and to ensure there is adequate time to pass full-year FY 2025 appropriations bills later this year.”
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The Dome of the U.S. Capitol Building is visible as protective fencing is erected around construction for the 2025 inauguration platform on the West Front on Capitol Hill on Sept. 17, 2024 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — The country’s next president will need a friendly Congress to make their policy dreams a reality, but control of the two chambers remains deeply uncertain with just weeks until Election Day — and whether the outcome will be a party trifecta in the nation’s capital.
Recent projections tilt in favor of Republicans taking the U.S. Senate, an already closely divided chamber that is sure to be near evenly split again next Congress.
And though Vice President Kamala Harris injected a jolt of energy into the Democratic Party, prognosticators still say the prizewinner of the House is anybody’s guess.
“The House is highly close and competitive, and really could go either way. And I say the same thing about the presidential race,” Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, told States Newsroom on Thursday.
Control of the 435-seat House remains a toss-up, with competitive races in both the seven swing states and in states that will almost certainly have no bearing on who wins the top of the ticket.
Sabato’s, an election prognosticator, currently ranks nine Republican seats of the roughly 30 competitive races as “toss-up” seats for the party — meaning the GOP incumbents are locked in competitive races.
The GOP has held a slim majority this Congress, and Democrats only need to net four seats to gain control.
“It really is right on the razor’s edge,” Kondik said. “It’s pretty crazy that, you know, we’ve had two straight elections with just 222-seat majorities. And it’s pretty rare historically for there to be, you know, majorities that small twice in a row — unprecedented.
“Usually you’d have one side or the other breaking out to a bigger advantage, and I think both sides are viewing this, really, as a district-by-district slug fest.”
Sabato’s adjusted its ratings on five races Thursday, including moving Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola of Alaska to the “toss-up” category from a safer “leans Democratic.” Kondik also nudged the race for Republican Rep. Mike Lawler of New York to “leans Republican” from “toss up.”
“The big ones are probably Peltola, and then Mike Lawler, who holds one of the bluest seats held by a Republican, but I moved him to ‘leans R.’ It seems pretty clear to me that he’s in a decent position,” Kondik said.
The National Republican Congressional Committee, the party’s fundraising arm for House races, announced in June nearly $1.2 million in ad buys in Alaska. The organization launched a new ad in the state this month that accuses Peltola of not supporting veterans.
In addition to Peltola, Kondik ranks nine other Democratic incumbents — of the nearly 40 competitive races — as toss-ups.
Among the toss-ups is the seat currently held by Rep. Matt Cartwright of Pennsylvania, a key swing state in the presidential race. Cartwright’s Republican challenger, Rob Bresnahan, runs an electrical contracting company in the northeastern Pennsylvania district that he took over from his grandfather.
Democrats are investing in the seat: Cartwright is running a new ad featuring union workers praising him, and just last week Harris hosted a rally in the district, which includes Scranton.
But the NRCC thinks they have a pretty good chance of flipping his seat.
Breshnahan’s company is “a union shop,” said NRCC head Rep. Richard Hudson of North Carolina. “So he can talk union talk. He’s a great candidate for us.”
“Matt Cartwright is in trouble,” Hudson said on the conservative “Ruthless Podcast” on Sept. 12.
“I think the way we’ve structured it, the type of candidates we recruited across the country, from Maine to Alaska, from Minnesota to Texas, regardless of top of the ticket, we’re going to pick up seats,” Hudson said.
But Sabato’s also nudged three seats toward the Democrats’ favor on Thursday.
Kondik moved Rep. Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin from the safety of “likely Republican” to the weaker “leans Republican” category.
Rep. Suzan DelBene, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, sees an “important opportunity” in Van Orden’s district. The GOP congressman, who represents central and western Wisconsin, became known for his profanity-laced outburst at young Senate pages for taking photos of the Capitol rotunda.
The Democrats are running challenger Rebecca Cooke, a small business owner, in the hopes of unseating him.
“We have an incredible candidate in Rebecca Cooke (against) one of the most extreme, which is saying a lot, Republicans in the House,” DelBene told reporters on a call Monday.
“We have put Rebecca Cooke on our Red-to-Blue list and are strongly supporting her campaign. She’s doing a great job, and this absolutely is a priority for us,” DelBene said, referring to the DCCC’s list of 30 candidates that receive extra fundraising support.
DelBene said she’s confident in the Democrats’ chances to flip the House, citing healthy coffers and revived interest.
“We have seen huge enthusiasm all across the country. We have seen people, more and more people turning out to volunteer, to knock on doors, to make phone calls,” she said.
Erin Covey, a House analyst with The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter, wrote on Sept. 5 that Democrats have a brighter outlook after Harris assumed the top of the ticket, though November remains a close call.
“Now, polling conducted by both parties largely shows Harris matching, or coming a few points short of, Biden’s 2020 margins across competitive House districts,” Covey wrote.
The NRCC has taken note. During his interview on the “Ruthless Podcast,” Hudson compared Harris becoming the Democrats’ new choice for president as a “bloodless coup,” and said the enthusiasm she’s sparked is a cause for concern for Republicans. Democratic delegates nominated Harris, in accordance with party rules, to run for the Oval Office after Biden dropped out in late July.
“A lot of people, even Democrats, you know, just weren’t comfortable voting for Joe Biden. With Kamala on the ticket, we saw a surge in Democrats coming home and having the enthusiasm,” Hudson said.
Hudson said he also worries about Democrats’ fundraising numbers.
“The one thing that keeps you awake at night is the Democrat money. It’s flooding,” Hudson said. “The second quarter this year I was able to raise the most money we’ve ever raised as a committee, and the Democrats raised $7 million more. I mean, it’s just, they just keep coming. It’s like the Terminator.”
“But we don’t have to match them dollar for dollar,” Hudson said. “We’ve just got to make sure we’ve got the resources we need. And so we’ve just got to keep our pace.”
The DCCC announced Friday it raised $22.3 million in August, bringing its total for this election cycle to $250.6 million.
Republicans are inching closer and closer to flipping the Senate red during this year’s elections, thanks to a map that favors GOP incumbents and puts Democrats on the defensive in several states.
West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice is widely expected to win his bid for the upper chamber, bringing Republicans up to 50 seats, as long as they hang on in Florida, Nebraska and Texas.
But Democrats will need to secure wins in several challenging states, including Arizona, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — and break the 50-50 tie through a Democratic presidency — if they want to remain the majority party.
That many Democratic wins seems increasingly unlikely, though not entirely out of the realm of possibility.
Montana, where Sen. Jon Tester is looking to secure reelection against GOP challenger Tim Sheehy, has been moved from a “toss-up” state to leaning toward Republicans by three respected analysis organizations in the last few weeks.
The Cook Political Report wrote in its ratings change earlier this month that several “public polls have shown Sheehy opening up a small, but consistent lead.”
“Democrats push back that their polling still shows Tester within the margin of error of the race, and that those are exactly the type of close races he’s won before,” their assessment said. “Tester, however, has never run on a presidential ballot in a polarized environment of this kind before — and even with his stumbles, Sheehy is still the strongest, best financed candidate he’s ever faced.”
Republicans winning Montana’s Senate seat could give them a firm, though narrow, 51-seat Senate majority.
That, however, would require the Republican incumbents in states like Florida and Texas — where it’s not clear if evolving trends against Republicans will continue — to secure their reelection wins.
And it would mean holding off a wild card independent candidate in the Cornhusker state.
The Cook Political Report says it’s “worth keeping an eye on a unique situation developing in Nebraska, where independent candidate Dan Osborn is challenging Republican Sen. Deb Fischer.”
CPR also noted in its analysis that Democrats’ best pick-up opportunities, which could rebalance the scales a bit, are Florida and Texas.
“Today, the Lone Star State looks like the better option because of the strengths and fundraising of Democrats’ challenger there, Rep. Colin Allred,” CPR wrote.
If Democrats do hold onto 50 seats, through whatever combination of wins and losses shakes out on election night, majority control would depend on whichever candidate wins the presidential contest.
Given the close nature of several Senate races, it is entirely possible control of that chamber isn’t known until after recounts take place in the swing states.
Chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Gary Peters, D-Mich., said during a Christian Science Monitor breakfast this week that he’s known all along Democratic candidates will be in “very right races.”
“In a nutshell, I’m optimistic,” Peters said. “I believe we’re going to hold the majority. I feel good about where we are. We’re basically where I thought we would be after Labor Day in really tight races. None of this is a surprise to us. Now we just have to run our playbook, be focused, be disciplined.”
The National Republican Senatorial Committee, led this cycle by Montana Sen. Steve Daines, is confident the GOP will pick up the Senate majority following November’s elections.
The group highlighted a Washington Post poll this week showing a tie between Democratic Sen. Bob Casey and GOP candidate Dave McCormick in the Pennsylvania Senate race.
NRSC Spokesman Philip Letsou sent out a written statement after the poll’s release that Casey is in the “race for his life…because Pennsylvania voters know Casey’s lockstep support for Kamala Harris and her inflationary, anti-fracking agenda will devastate their economy. Pennsylvanians have had enough of liberal, career politicians like Casey and Harris.”
The GOP acquisition of a handful of seats would still require the next Republican leader to constantly broker deals with Democrats, since the chamber is widely expected to retain the legislative filibuster.
That rule requires at least 60 senators vote to advance legislation toward final passage and is the main reason the chamber rarely takes up partisan bills.
A Republican sweep of the House, Senate and White House for unified government would give them the chance to pass certain types of legislation through the fast-track budget reconciliation process they used to approve the 2017 tax law.
How wide their majorities are in each chamber will determine how much they can do within such a bill, given Republicans will still have centrist members, like Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski and Maine’s Susan Collins, balancing the party against more far-right policy goals.
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