Long Weekend

Congress finished their work yesterday afternoon and took off for the long Memorial Day weekend; they won’t be back to work until June 7th (the Senate) or June 8th (the House). Not that they will actually be taking much time off, this is an election year so most of them will be spending lots of time talking to constituents back home. With the number of upsets so far this year in just the primary elections, electioneering is likely to be even more of a factor in the deliberations of Congress this year. Democrats will likely to try to bring up some measures for votes that their liberal base want to see passed, even though any realistic observer would be well aware that Senate Republicans, appealing to their conservative base, would certainly block actual votes. All posturing for the base, but it will take up time and make it more difficult to get any real work done.

This year it is possible that electioneering might even interfere with passage of the DHS budget. Typically the Defense budget and the DHS budget get passed even if the rest of the government gets covered by a continuing resolution until after the election. This year, because of immigration issues, the DHS budget might get held up as well. Then we will have to pay particular attention to the actual language of the continuing resolution to make sure that it actually continues the CFATS program that currently expires on October 4th.