Committee Hearings – Week of 6-11-23

Both the House and Senate are scheduled to be in session this week with an interesting slate of hearings. With the summer recess fast approaching the first spending bill, Military Construction, gets its final markup, but behind the scenes wrangling is still holding up other spending bills. NDAA and the Intelligence Authorization bills get their subcommittee markups going (NDAA cybersecurity here). And the FAA reauthorization gets its only markup. All of this in the House against the backdrop of the potentially continuing revolt of eleven Republican bomb throwers. And in the Senate, there is a markup  of interest in the Homeland Security Committee.

Senate Markup

On Wednesday the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will hold a business meeting to consider 14 bills. Bills of potential interest here include:

S. 1798, Offices of Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction and Health Security Act of 2023,

S. 1835, Cybersecurity Awareness Act of 2023, and

S. 1862, DHS International Cyber Partner Act of 2023.

S 1798 was just published, but the other two have not been published yet, so I have not had a chance to review them. I will have a review of S 1798 up before the markup.

On the Floor

There is nothing scheduled this week in the House that is of particular interest here. Today’s session should be drama free since there are just bills being considered under suspension and the only procedural moves that could delay things are demands for recorded votes. With the small number of bills being considered that would not be a major issue.

The House Leadership is going to try to break the blockade from last week by starting Tuesday’s session with the consideration of a new rule (to be formulated today) for the consideration of Rep Clyde’s (R,GA) resolution (HJ Res 44) that would overturn a recent BATFE regulation on weapons. This resolution may have been the proximate trigger for last week’s revolt. The underlying resolution may not have the votes to pass, and it certainly would not be taken up in the Senate, but forcing a vote on the rule may break the legislative logjam (but then again it may not). The real test will be in the spending bills which the House used to pass in June and early July. To appease the bomb throwers the spending bills will have to substantially cut spending below the levels set in the debt limit bill. That level of cuts will never survive in the Senate, but McCarthy probably needs to see them passed in the House anyway and then make the best deals possible in Conference. And those deals will inevitably piss off the bomb throwers. Political theater is going to get really ugly.