GovTrack.us by Daniel Schuman
Welcome back to the lame duck session of Congress, the final weeks before the president, all of the House, and one third of the Senate end their terms. We will soon see Congress attempt to address major legislation concerning funding federal agencies (“appropriations”) and push forward any remaining bills they’d like to see enacted before time runs out on January 3rd at noon.
We also will see Congress deal with administrative matters, such as the potential release of the House ethics report concerning former-Rep.Matt Gaetz (R-FL1), election of party and committee leadership for the next Congress, and the adoption of rules that govern the operations of the party caucuses in each chamber in the next Congress.
Bills this week
It’s fast-track week in the House, with 52 bills teed-up under the 2/3rds majority for passage rules for less controversial bills. But two others may have some debate. One bill is the Prove It Act, which would give small businesses a new way to challenge regulations that impact them. The other is the Crucial Communist Teaching Act, which would create a voluntary national curriculum to teach students that communism is bad. This bill is valuable to the Republicans less because it might become law but more because it’s a way to generate buzz around school curriculum issues.
There’s also legislation concerning judicial districts, a bunch of bills concerning public lands, and a ton of legislation to rename post office buildings as well as issue gold medals and commemorative coins. I also see a reauthorization of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, legislation to manage agency software and to allow for public repositories of code generated in federal agencies (the SHARE IT Act), a federal agency performance bill, a bill to exclude service-connected disability compensation when determining a person’s wealth, and legislation to address discriminatory land use policies. There are also bills to update the U.S. Code based on newly enacted laws (here’s an explainer).
In committee and in the Senate (they don’t say)
There are only eleven committee meetings this week scheduled in the House, six in the Senate, and one joint committee meeting. The most consequential hearing is on the Veterans Administration’s Budget shortfall, because the Veterans Administration is a tremendously expensive agency and their shortfall disrupted the appropriations process. I also suspect some attention will be paid to the House Oversight Committee’s hearing on lessons learned from COVID-19, a hearing into the attempted assassination of Trump, and the public health dangers of PFAS exposures…
READ FULL ARTICLE HERE… (govtrack.us)
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