Senate in; House out

by Amy West, GovTrack.us, July 11, 2025

Because the reconciliation bill process ended with the House coming back to Washington last week, they took this week off. But the Senate was in session as we'll note below. Both chambers should be back next week.

On the floor, the Senate continues to churn through nominees for various Trump Administration positions.

Off the floor, there's been a bit more of interest. The Senate has been working on its Fiscal Year 2026 bills, but the appropriations committee has been more adversarial than usual according to Politico.

The same article also points out that the rescission bill may not have enough votes for the simple majority it needs. Trump is now threatening Senators who are hesitant to take away $1 billion in funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. It's possible that the Senate will try for another state-based carve out approach as they did with the reconciliation bill to get Sen. Murkowski's (R-AK) vote but this time for a group of senators rather than just one.

Once transmitted to Congress, Congress has 45 legislative days to pass a rescission bill. That deadline for this one is July 18th. So, if the Senate is going to amend it, they'll need to get moving because today is Friday July 11 and an amended bill would have to go back to the House for passage.

The Senate is also considering a bill of sanctions against Russia. What's unusual about this bill is how much explicit power it hands over to the President. Yet, the White House says Congress isn't giving him enough of a free hand. At the moment it has pretty broad support in the Senate. But it's all very tentative because Democrats don't want to hand over even more power to the President and some Republicans don't want to vote for it unless it hands over more power to the President.

Presumably, if it's revised as the President desires and passes the Senate, it would sail through the House. We'll find out.

Lastly, both chambers typically take all of August off. We usually use that time to write about Congress and procedure. We've asked on our social media accounts and now we're asking all of our email recipients: what's something about Congress you wish you understood better? We'll be collecting ideas for the next few weeks. Thanks!

View this post on the web · Select which updates you get from us · Send us feedback about this post

Hawaii Congressional Delegation