Congress once again left for August without clearing a final version of a single appropriations bill, meaning the September agenda will be dominated by partisan wrangling over how to avoid a partial government shutdown in less than a month.
Current government funding expires on Sept. 30, and this year the circumstances are more fraught than usual, with the White House Office of Management and Budget attempting “pocket” rescissions as the end of the fiscal year approaches.
“Any effort to rescind appropriated funds without congressional approval is a clear violation of the law,” Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, R-Maine, said in a statement. “Instead of this attempt to undermine the law, the appropriate way is to identify ways to reduce excessive spending through the bipartisan, annual appropriations process.”
President Donald Trump has informally requested $2 billion for projects to help “beautify” Washington, D.C., in conjunction with his takeover of management of the Metropolitan Police Department and the deployment of federal law enforcement and the National Guard to the streets of the nation’s capital.
“We’re going to be raising about $2 billion from Congress. Congress is happy to do it,” Trump said on Aug. 22.
The most likely venue for such funding would be as part of a stopgap funding bill, with Democrats also still seeking a fix to a previous spending package that effectively blocked D.C. from accessing about another $1 billion in locally collected revenue.
“We’re going to handle D.C. first because that’s directly within our purview and then look to other cities around America as well. We’ve got to also end these policing policies that have prevented law enforcement from actually keeping safety on the streets for residents and … visitors who become victims,” Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said Aug. 29 on CNN.
In the immediate term, the Senate plans to work through its version of the fiscal 2026 defense authorization bill, another must-pass measure. The House Rules Committee announced plans to get the chamber’s version of the defense measure teed up for floor consideration the week of Sept. 8.
House GOP leaders have also set their sights on another partisan, filibuster-proof reconciliation bill before the end of the calendar year, but after Republicans only narrowly passed the last one, the effort faces a steep climb.
And there’s plenty of other business left to be addressed before the end of the year, including what to do about premium tax credits for health insurance. There’s also bipartisan interest in seeking to restore a gambling loss deduction, helping to drive interest in a potential tax agreement this fall.
Any number of other tax breaks also could find their way into end-of-year legislation, such as extending the work opportunity tax credit and a tax exclusion for homeowners’ canceled mortgage debt.
Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Chairman Bill Cassidy, R-La., also wants to put together a broad health care package that could include bipartisan priorities such as a pharmacy benefit manager overhaul and health care price transparency provisions.
Nominations standoff resumes
The Senate adjourned for its August recess without addressing much of the backlog of nominations that had previously led the chamber’s Republican majority to threaten to stay in session well into August.
Republicans have been talking openly about effectively changing the rules to further reduce the ability of the minority party to delay nominations.
“President Trump has more than 1,000 senior-level appointments that require Senate confirmation. Under a radical Democratic resistance strategy, the Senate has so far confirmed only 135. Confirming even the most routine nominees is now a bitter fight. It is time to change Senate confirmation rules,” Majority Whip John Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican, wrote last week in The Wall Street Journal.
Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford, for instance, said in an August interview with a home-state television station that having no voice votes on nominations was not sustainable and that he would prefer bipartisan rules changes — as unlikely as such a move would be.
“That’s never happened in the history of the Senate to have zero voice votes for a nominee. We’ve got to be able to fix this process. That needs to be a bipartisan fix. But I can promise you, Republicans will do this to the next Democrat president, and it’s not good for the country long term for the president to not be able to get their staff,” Lankford said.
“But if we can’t get to that, we’ll have to do a partisan rule change. But we’ve got to fix this process. No matter who is president, they’ve got to be able to have their staff,” Lankford told KOTV. “They can’t just be blocked out the whole time.”
In addition to the executive branch backlog, Senate Republicans will be eager to confirm more of Trump’s nominees to the federal bench.
Epstein overhang
When the House left for August recess, it did so with lingering questions about what the chamber’s Republican majority may do about the records of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California plan to provide an update Wednesday on the status of a discharge petition that seeks to require the release of Epstein-related information.
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has been receiving related documents from the Department of Justice following the issuance of a subpoena.
Oversight Chair James R. Comer, a Kentucky Republican, also subpoenaed the Epstein estate late in the recess period, but one of the first questions the returning Congress faces is whether the August developments will be sufficient to unlock the House floor, where business halted before the recess after it became clear the Rules Committee could not muster the votes to set rules to move ahead on any contentious legislation without addressing the Epstein scandal.
The fiscal 2026 Energy-Water spending bill is the first major measure on the House’s fall docket.
Paul M. Krawzak contributed to this report.
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