BCRA unlikely to survive the Parliamentarian? Hold your horses.

Good afternoon from Capitol Hill.  The Senate is in recess until July 8. The House is here this week, working through appropriations bills in the middle of a D.C. heat wave. The stated aim of House GOP leaders is to have all 12 appropriations bills out of the Appropriations Committee by mid-July, with consideration by […]

Good afternoon from Capitol Hill. The House is out this week and the Senate is in for a short week (in other words, their normal work week).  Before leaving town last week, the House passed the National Defense Authorization Act which contained several key amendments to address the White House’s continued politicization of the military. […]

The House and Senate are back this week. The House begins the process of working through the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The NDAA is the annual defense authorization bill that sets policies and spending levels for a whole host of things such as personnel, equipment, guns, bullets, tanks, planes, and ships. Over the years, […]

Good afternoon from Capitol Hill.  The House and Senate return this week to a state of American politics that looks very different than when they departed Washington a week ago. When they left, the foundations of the American system – blind and fair justice, a respect for legal tradition and accommodation, and the ability to […]

Good afternoon from Capitol Hill. Both chambers are out of session but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing going on! Here are a few things to watch for in the coming weeks. Appropriations On The Move Congressional appropriations committees are already hard at work preparing spending bills for fiscal year 2025, which begins in September. However, […]

Good afternoon from Capitol Hill. The House and Senate are both in session this week, hurtling toward next week’s highly coveted Memorial Day recess. Both sides will take on the crisis at the southern border this week – though from different angles. In the House, the chamber will vote on legislation to bar illegal aliens […]

Good afternoon from Capitol Hill. Happy belated Mother’s Day!  The House and Senate are both in session this week, with Speaker Mike Johnson coming off a fresh motion to vacate vote. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene called the vote on Wednesday of last week. As promised, House Democrats made a motion to table (or, kill) the […]

Good afternoon from Capitol Hill. The House and Senate are in session this week. The Senate is still struggling through its reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration, while the House waits to see if Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene will make good on her promise to call a vote on the motion to vacate the House […]

Good afternoon from Capitol Hill. The House and Senate are back in session after a brief recess.  Last week, the Senate followed the House and passed their $95 billion Taiwan-Israel-Ukraine-TikTok supplemental spending bill. Democratic majority leader Chuck Schumer blocked all amendments with the tacit acquiescence of Mitch McConnell and a majority of the GOP conference. […]

Good afternoon from Washington. What a long, strange trip it’s been. In the week since we last met: Why does all of this matter? Let’s begin with the House Rules Committee. Formed in 1789, the Rules Committee is the oldest standing committee in the House. It has a unique and specific function to the institution: […]

Good afternoon from Capitol Hill. This past weekend’s Iranian attack on Israel has reignited the debate in Congress over foreign aid. Of course, nothing is as simple as passing stand-alone aid to Israel – and last time the Senate and House tried, the White House called it “a ploy,” and yesterday confirmed they “will not […]

Good afternoon from Capitol Hill. Both the House and Senate return to DC this week after a two week recess – accompanied by a full solar eclipse on Monday. A portent? No one knows. But if you feel like we’re all hurtling directly into the sun, you’re not alone. On deck this week: the impeachment […]

Good afternoon from Capitol Hill. The House and Senate are still in recess, but it’s not all fun and games. House Speaker Mike Johnson is signaling his intentions to move a Kyiv-sized problem to the House floor next week. In a recent Fox News interview, Johnson laid out a potential path for the House to […]

Good afternoon from Capitol Hill. On Friday, the House and Senate left town for a two week recess – but not without a little (okay, a lot) of drama. Both chambers muscled through a $1.2 trillion “minibus” appropriations bill to fund the rest of Fiscal Year 2024, which ends at the end of September. House […]

Good afternoon from Capitol Hill.  The House and Senate are both in session this week, staring down yet another government funding deadline on Friday. On the table is another “minibus” – a set of 6 appropriations bills that fund roughly three-quarters of federal discretionary spending and cover everything from the Department of Health and Human […]

Good afternoon from Capitol Hill. It’s still early enough in the week that I’d like whatever cocktail of uppers Joe Biden was on during last week’s State of the Union.  President Biden’s speech carved new ground for this White House. The Spectator’s Ben Domenech described the speech this way: It is without question the most […]

Good afternoon from Capitol Hill.  The House and Senate are both in session. Over the weekend, text was released of the six bill “minibus” designed to finalize passage of the Fiscal Year 2024 spending bills (FY24 ends in September, so the Congress is predictably already behind in passing any semblance of regular order appropriations bills […]

Good afternoon from Capitol Hill.  The Senate is back in session, beginning this evening. The House returns on Wednesday. Both chambers are set for a course collision with two government funding deadlines that hit on March 1 and March 8. How Congress intends to proceed here is a bit unclear. The House Speaker Mike Johnson […]

Good afternoon from Capitol Hill.  The House and Senate are still out of session; both chambers return next week to deal with the first of two government funding deadlines on March 1 and March 8.  In the meantime, both chambers continue to wrestle with the wide-open southern border. In the House, a group of moderate […]

Good afternoon from Capitol Hill. Early Tuesday morning the Senate passed its $95.3 billion foreign aid bill, which sends money to Ukraine, Taiwan, Israel, and to U.S. conflicts in the Red Sea. Despite early commitments by Senate Republicans to only fund Ukraine’s border after we had secured our own, the bill passed without any border […]

Good afternoon from Capitol Hill. I’m happy to be back in the saddle at CPI for what – by Washington standards, anyway – has already been a blistering week. The fate of the Senate’s “border deal” can be summed up in two quotes from Mitch McConnell, each issued yesterday. The first, from Morning Mitch McConnell:  […]

WASHINGTON – On Monday, the Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI) announced six new hires and three promotions that will be integral to the operations of the organization as it continues its mission to build and support the conservative movement in Washington and around the nation. “CPI continues to put an emphasis on finding the best staff in […]

Good afternoon from Capitol Hill. Last week, the House of Representatives elected conservative Mike Johnson from Louisiana as Speaker. Through a number of ballots and weeks, Mike Johnson emerged as the one who would unite and move the House forward with its business. Center for Renewing American President, Russ Vought, wrote in a tweet, “I […]

Good afternoon from Capitol Hill. Both the House and the Senate returned to session this week, staring down three weeks until the September 30 funding deadline. Back on August 21, the House Freedom Caucus (HFC) issued an official position, “No Security, No Funding.” As reported by HFC members, this was intended to guide the discussion […]