A play-by-play preview of the day's congressional news
| | | | |  | | By Katherine Tully-McManus | With an assist from Jordain Carney
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House Appropriations Committee Chair Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) at a committee meeting. | Francis Chung E&E/POLITICO | SEPTEMBER PREVIEW: SPENDING DRAMA — Funding the government is never a breeze, but a handful of factors converging this fall may make for an especially rocky ride. There's the end-of-September deadline to pass (in theory) all 12 appropriations bills. But that's not going to happen, so a stopgap funding measure is the issue at hand. Short term shuffle: With the midterms coming up quickly and Republicans confident that they'll take control of the House, the GOP is motivated to move a shorter short-term funding bill and then then renegotiate with some more leverage during the post-election lame duck session. But Democrats want to strike while the iron is hot, aka while they still hold power, and would be happy to have a funding deal through the end of the year. (But House and Senate Dems aren't even aligned at this point, especially on how much money to give the Pentagon.) Legacy looming: The top Senate appropriators, Chair Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Vice Chair Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), are both retiring at the end of this Congress. The pair have worked out countless deals, but do they have a few more left in them? Leahy wants to see new spending levels in the short term package before the year ends. Permitting problems: Of course there's a Manchin angle. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) hopes to meet a condition set by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) during talks over Dems' party line tax, climate and health care bill. That means attaching energy project permitting provisions to the short term funding patch. There are concerns from Manchin and other centrist Democrats about red tape holding up new climate and infrastructure projects. Our budget and appropriations queen, Caitlin Emma, has more on what to expect in the September scramble for a spending deal.
| | | | STEP INSIDE THE WEST WING: What's really happening in West Wing offices? Find out who's up, who's down, and who really has the president's ear in our West Wing Playbook newsletter, the insider's guide to the Biden White House and Cabinet. For buzzy nuggets and details that you won't find anywhere else, subscribe today. | | | | | GOOD MORNING! Welcome to Huddle, the play-by-play guide to all things Capitol Hill, on this Thursday, August 25. Here's a back-to-school mood for ya: Congress hasn't passed all 12 appropriations bills on time since your Huddle host was starting kindergarten. HEADS UP: Huddle (and your Huddle host) are taking a break next week, Aug. 29 to Sept. 2. The newsletter will return to your inbox on the Tuesday after Labor Day, Sept. 6. PILEUP ON RACE FOR OVERSIGHT GAVEL — Rep. Carolyn Maloney's (D-N.Y.) primary loss has become the unofficial starting gun for a potentially messy race among House Democrats for who will succeed her as the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee. Two Democrats — Reps. Stephen Lynch (Mass.) and Gerry Connolly (Va.) — quickly jumped into the race. Meanwhile, Rep. Jamie Raskin (Md.) told POLITICO that he is actively considering it. Rep. Ro Khanna's (D-Calif.) name has also been floated as a potential Maloney successor, but Khanna is publicly urging Raskin to run and said that he wants "progressives and the Dem Caucus to rally around him. ... He is meant to lead in this moment." No word yet on if he'd jump into the race if Raskin doesn't. Jordain and Kyle have more details here on the early jockeying to become the top Democrat on the influential panel next year. TWITTER COMES TO TOWN — The Senate Judiciary Committee has a hearing on the books for September featuring testimony from Twitter whistleblower Peiter Zatko, whose complaint made public on Tuesday alleges "egregious" privacy and security violations at the company. Zatko is Twitter's former chief security officer and alleges that the company repeatedly failed to protect users' data. Rebecca Kern has more on Congress' interest in the social media giant. OFF THE HOOK — The House Ethics Committee dismissed a case alleging that Rep. John Rutherford (R-Fla.) violated the STOCK Act by failing to properly report stock trades. The case was referred to the panel by the Office of Congressional Ethics, which found "substantial reason to believe" that the violations occurred. And, they did. But the panel concluded that the failure to report the periodic transaction reports on time was not "knowing or willful" and that he was "generally unclear on the requirements relating to PTR filings." According to the committee, Rutherford has made "diligent efforts to take appropriate remedial actions and ensure his continued compliance with applicable financial disclosure requirements." Nancy has more, including the letter from Rutherford's lawyer and the tricky business of House Ethics looking into one of their own in Congress Minutes.
| | | | SUBSCRIBE TO POWER SWITCH: The energy landscape is profoundly transforming. Power Switch is a daily newsletter that unlocks the most important stories driving the energy sector and the political forces shaping critical decisions about your energy future, from production to storage, distribution to consumption. Don't miss out on Power Switch, your guide to the politics of energy transformation in America and around the world. SUBSCRIBE TODAY. | | | | | QUICK LINKS For U.S. troops who survived Kabul airport disaster, guilt and grief endure, from Dan Lamothe at The Washington Post Rep. Scott Perry suing to block DOJ access to his cell phone, from Kyle TRANSITIONS James Mismash is now a military legislative assistant for Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.). He was previously a defense budget research assistant for Mackenzie Eaglen at AEI. Caleb Orr is now a research fellow at Boyden Gray & Associates. He joins the firm after nearly seven years with Sen. Marco Rubio's (R-Fla.) office, where he most recently was senior policy adviser and deputy staff director of the Senate Small Business Committee. TODAY IN CONGRESS The House and Senate are out. AROUND THE HILL Not much.
| | | WEDNESDAY'S WINNER: Dan Cohen correctly answered that John Quincy Adams was a regular skinny dipper in Tyber Creek and the enterprising journalist who stole his clothes until she got an interview was Anne Royall (she is buried in Congressional Cemetary!) TODAY'S QUESTION from Dan: What political oddity, never accomplished before or since, was achieved by the man first named Leslie Lynch King, Jr.? The first person to correctly guess gets a mention in the next edition of Huddle. Send your answers to ktm@politico.com. GET HUDDLE emailed to your phone each morning. Follow Katherine on Twitter @ktullymcmanus | | | | Follow us | | | | |
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