Committee Hearings – Week of 11-12-23

This week, with both the House and Senate in session and the latest funding deadline set for Friday midnight, there is a modest hearing schedule in the both houses. For the purposes of this blog, there are three hearings of interest (all in the House); a homeland threat hearing and two rules hearings.

Homeland Security Threat

On Wednesday, the House Homeland Security Committee will hold a hearing on “Worldwide Threats to the Homeland”. The witness list includes:

Alejandro N. Mayorkas, DHS,

Christopher A. Wray, FBI, and

Christine Abizaid, DNI

This will be a high-level overview, so do not expect a lot of details (which would be classified in any case). Cybersecurity will be touched upon, but the major focus will be on threats from Iran and China.

Rules Hearings

Today, the House Rules Committee will meet to craft the rules for the consideration of two spending related bill for possible floor consideration on Tuesday. Those two bills are:

HR__ – Further Continuing Appropriations and Other Extensions Act, 2024, and

HR 5894 - Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2024

With the Republican 11 having three votes on the Committee, this hearing will be the first major test of Speaker Johnson’s first attempt at crafting a continuing resolution. TheHill.com reported on Saturday about the opposition of Rep Roy (R,TX) to this plan. If his two fringe cohorts join him in voting against the rule, this CR will go nowhere.

Tomorrow, the Rules Committee will take up two other bills:

HR 5893 - Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2024

HR 5961 - No Funds for Iranian Terrorism Act

On the Floor

The current schedule in the House lists three of the four bills mentioned above as “Possible Legislation Considered Pursuant to a Rule”, the odd man out is the CR. Some sort of CR needs to be signed by the President before Friday midnight to prevent a government shutdown this weekend. If the CR rule is approved today, then it will almost certainly be first up on the agenda tomorrow.

Interestingly, HR 4820, the THUD spending bill that the House considered (but did not complete) last week is back on the schedule for this week. Like HR 4664, the House considered a full slate of amendments, but failed to conduct a final vote on the bill. In both cases there was some Republican opposition to provisions in the bill, and it only takes four Republican nays to kill the bill. It will be interesting to see if an additional amendment is considered on the floor to get this bill to move to completion, or if some other deal has been made.