The Bellevue Compass

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The House leaves town on Thursday for its summer recess, so a packed legislative agenda and a long to-do list have had Washington working late into the evening to prioritize certain legislative issues before the deadline hits. The Senate remains in session for another two weeks. We break it all down below. 

The Congressional Breakdown 

Last Thursday evening, President Trump gave a prime-time address to the nation to push his landmark legislation, the SAVE American Act, advocating for election reform that would require all Americans to show a form of ID at the voting booth. The legislation remains his priority, even as Congress’s list was far more pressing: the annual defense policy funding package; a bill to fund the government through midterms; a budget resolution for the reconciliation process, and; a stock trading measure. 

Even the GOP seems inclined to shun Trump’s call for the moment, focusing its efforts instead on a continuing resolution that would ensure the government remains funded through the midterm elections. Neither party can afford the shutdown headlines that would kick up the news cycle come September, if a plan to fund the government isn’t in place by the time voters think about heading to the polls. More on the continuing resolution in a moment. 

As for the National Defense Authorization Bill, it’s slated for a vote today at 3:30 pm, along with other legislation, but it’s still unclear whether Speaker Johnson has the votes to push the package through. Some members are still balking at the price tag—to the tune of $1 trillion—and at the inclusion of measures from the SAVE America Act now linked to the bill, which the Senate is expected to strip out anyway. At the center of the attempt to convince last-minute holdouts to vote for the bill are discussions surrounding how the SAVE America Act might actually be enforced, which, according to Politico, are still being negotiated even at the eleventh hour. As the GOP goes through more than 30 measures attached to the NDAA bill, things are getting cut presumably to ensure passability, including the amendment banning transgender individuals from serving in the military.

Now onto the continuing resolution bill. The stopgap funding measure that the GOP has planned would fund the government from October 1st to December 4th and bears a lot of resemblance to the last few continuing resolutions that the GOP has utilized in the last year. Rather than wait until the September deadline, though, the House passed the measure 220-205 late last night, hoping to avoid those aforementioned headlines in the news cycle before the September 30th deadline. The fate of the House-passed version of a continuing resolution remains to be seen, though, as Majority Leader Thune has indicated that his chamber will craft its own continuing resolution bill before their August recess, giving them two weeks to iron out the details before leaving town.

Over the last year, the House has passed three appropriations bills funding national security, the State Department and other relevant programs; the FDA and agricultural development; and the Department of Veterans Affairs and military construction, among other related agencies. These bills, though controversial for the tactics used to pass them, are notably easier topics than what Congress stares down now: funding for agencies like the Pentagon, as the US enters war with Iran. 

Democrats indicated early on that they were against a continuing resolution at this point,  namely with topics like immigration enforcement still looming large, especially in the wake of ICE officers’ killing of two men in two separate states, Maine and Texas. While Immigration and Customs Enforcement is funded for the next three years, the Department of Homeland Security’s funding will run out, along with other agencies, on September 30th. The bill contains no language to ensure new dollars won’t go to Border Patrol or Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a long-held sticking point for Democrats. 

Meanwhile, as is increasingly the case, Trump and the GOP are on similar-but-separate wavelengths about a stopgap funding measure. The White House on Monday sent a list of programs it wants to see funded—at higher levels—under any funding patch enacted before the deadline. The list referred to “anomalies” as special exceptions to the usually flat stopgap funding, including increases for military health programs, certain national security systems, and operations of national parks, among others. This is where the Senate may come in to try passing their own resolution, including at least some of the White House’s requests for exceptions, as the House bill notably shunned any of the requests. 

Finally, after months of fits and starts, the House will vote on the Stop Insider Trading Act following its passage out of committee this week. And, in congressional inner workings, Speaker Johnson indicated on Tuesday that he supports a more extensive ban on lawmakers having sexual relationships with any congressional aides, not just subordinates in their personal offices or on a committee. 

The Latest on Iran

Last week, President Trump notified Congress that the United States was once again at war with Iran. Since then, three service members have been killed in the conflict, bringing the total number of American casualties up to seventeen. Yesterday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine, testified before Congress on the cost of the war, fielding questions from a notably and understandably irate group of lawmakers who questioned the rising cost of the conflict. 

Hegseth and Caine defended the cost of the nearly $88 billion supplemental funding request from the Pentagon and the White House, breaking down the number: the roughly $21 billion readiness portion would cover military pay, replace equipment used in recent operations, and stabilize fuel shortfalls, while the $46 billion capability portion would expand production of weaponry, rocket motors, and hypersonics, among others. 

Even if the votes are there for the supplemental budget, it’s likely that the request would not be granted until September, when both chambers return from recess. In the meantime, the Senate plans to vote again this week on a war powers resolution to stop the conflict from continuing without their input. 

The Sector Breakdown 

The Pennsylvania Impact 

Pennsylvania’s Governor Shapiro responded to President Trump’s Thursday evening remarks on voter reform and fraud: "Show us the numbers." 

During President Trump’s address, he spoke about a Chinese compromise of voter data, a supposed plot by the US to minimize Chinese meddling, and a broader effort to “lull the American public into a false sense of security about the integrity of American elections”. 

Shapiro, in response, said that if the president were truly concerned about election integrity, he wouldn’t have “defunded the agency that actually protects states from attempts at foreign interference”. The Department of Homeland Security on Thursday announced that it found evidence of thousands of noncitizens on voter rolls in Pennsylvania, California, New Jersey, and Nevada, but stopped short of declaring if there was evidence of actual voting by noncitizens or explaining how the agency had reached its conclusion. In response, Shapiro said that the state takes every claim of illegal election interference seriously, and urged the administration that if they have any real evidence to “provide it to us. We want to work to make sure that there’s integrity always in our system”. 

Close to home, in a Tuesday news conference, New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill said that more than 6,000 non-citizens were accidentally added to New Jersey’s voter rolls due to a software error at the state’s Motor Vehicles Commission. “Fewer than 400 of them” actually cast ballots in various elections, she stated. 

Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania, the landmark bipartisan housing bill that lapsed into law after the president refused to sign it has become a mini headache for GOP members. The central question: how do they promote an important bill that the head of their party doesn’t seem to care about? 

Representative Rob Bresnahan of Pennsylvania, who represents a key swing district in the state, told NOTUS, “I know my voters, my constituents. My electors are super excited about the package.” Despite the president calling the bill a “big yawn,” Pennsylvanians and their legislators are seeing the positives.

The federal bill, the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, includes a Whole-Home Repairs section, a name that may sound familiar. The Whole-Home Repairs program provides grants and loans to people to repair and weatherize their aging homes, which is getting a federal pilot within the Act. Championed by state Sen. Nikki Saval, the Whole-Home Repairs program received $125 million in funding in 2022. 

And just a few days ago, Governor Josh Shapiro announced a Housing Action Plan, a statewide strategy to build and preserve more homes, modernize housing regulations, and break down barriers preventing people from finding stable housing. 

Housing and cost of living are especially important to Pennsylvanians at the moment as we head into midterms, and as the renewal of the Iran War brings gas back up to $4 a gallon on Monday. In Pennsylvania specifically, the average price per gallon is creeping closer to $4.22.

Did you know? Before it was the birthplace of American independence, Pennsylvania was home to a doomsday cult that believed the world would end in 1694. The "Society of the Woman in the Wilderness" was founded by a German immigrant, Johannes Kelpius, and his followers settled in the area outside of Philadelphia in the late 1600s.

Till next time,