The House and Senate are in recess this week. However, several House committees are holding virtual/hybrid markups and hearings.
On Thursday, the House Natural Resources; Education and Labor; Science, Space and Technology; Small Business; Ways and Means; and Veterans Affairs Committees will markup their parts of congressional Democrats’ $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation package, which incorporates large swaths of President Joe Biden’s proposed American Jobs and Families Plan unveiled earlier this year. On Friday, the House Agriculture and Homeland Security Committees will hold their markups. The 13 House committees tasked with drafting portions of the massive package have until Wednesday, September 15 to markup their sections and send them to the House Budget Committee for a final markup. The earliest the House will consider the legislation is during the week of September 20, however, this timeline could easily slip to the following week.
The House adopted a procedural resolution (H. Res. 601) on August 24 putting the chamber on track to vote on the Senate-passed Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (H.R. 3684) by Monday, September 27, after nine moderate House Democrats objected to slowing down the vote on the infrastructure bill. However, if progress on the budget reconciliation package has not significantly been made by that date, the House may not have the 217 votes required for passage of the bill.
The House and Senate will also need to pass a short-term spending bill (i.e., Continuing Resolution [CR]) by Thursday, September 30 in order to temporarily fund the federal government and avoid a shutdown beginning the first day of Fiscal Year 2022 (i.e., October 1). The CR will likely last through late November or early December 2021. Additional items that will very likely be part of the CR include: a suspension or increase of the
federal debt limit; a
short-term extension of the federal surface transportation programs included in the 2015 FAST Act; a
short-term extension of the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP); and a
short-term extension of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant authorization and other related programs. Emergency supplemental appropriations to address Hurricane Ida and other storms and natural disasters in 2020 and 2021 may also be included in the CR.