In the political system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups. Members of the House of Representatives who serve two year terms and the Senators who serve six year terms. These are their stories... for the third of a four week stretch ending with Memorial Day.

The House of Representatives is in session starting Tuesday, having left early last week. Looking at the floor schedule, there are seventeen bills on suspension, which means they must have support from 2/3s of House members to pass. There are eight bills set for consideration pursuant to a House rule, which means a majority is necessary for them to pass the House.

On suspension is a major bill to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration, legislation which passed the Senate at the end of last week. It is expected to overwhelmingly pass the House and then go to the president for signature. The Senate passed its bill with an overwhelming majority and now is jamming the House, forcing them to take the Senate language and adopt it unchanged. The House left early last week after passing a one-week extension to authorize the FAA, and this is the long-term authorization bill.

There is also a measure to force the President to send weapons to Israel.

This week is "national police week," where many law enforcement officers come to Washington, D.C. So not coincidentally, many of the remainder of the bills set for a floor vote are related to policing, crime, or immigrants. They are likely messaging bills, designed to send a political message to constituents and, if possible, keep Republicans voting together while splitting Democrats. Few of them are likely to become law this Congress.

With respect to House committees, the most notable news is that the House Armed Services Committee released its version of the FY 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The NDAA is legislation that contains nearly a trillion dollars in spending authorization, which is basically policy on how money is permitted to be spent. Authorization bills like this one are different from appropriations bills which actually provide (i.e. appropriate) the funds to spend. The House Armed Services Committee is set to markup (i.e. review, possibly amend, and probably approve) the legislation next week, which you can find here.

The House has 36 hearings set for this week, with five scheduled before the House Oversight Committee, and four each before the Homeland Security and the Natural Resources committees. Note that there are only two appropriations meetings scheduled, which suggest that the House hearings are winding to a close and that markups of the appropriations bills will be coming soon. A handful of hearings are on law enforcement related themes, as well as hot button matters such as China and college campuses. It appears that House Oversight will consider (and likely recommend) that Attorney Garland be held in contempt of Congress

The Senate reconvenes on Tuesday, but its schedule for this week is an enigma, with the consideration of nominations set for Tuesday. Perhaps members will be paying attention to the trial of Sen. Menendez, which is starting this week.

Senate Committees have 23 meetings scheduled for this week, with the most scheduled before the Appropriations Committee. This isn't a surprise, as the appropriations process usually starts a bit later in the Senate and the goal, as always, is to have the legislation buttoned up before the fiscal year ends at the end of September. That's most likely not going to happen because the House and Senate won't be able to agree on top line spending numbers --- certainly not prior to the election --- and the short term result will be a continuing resolution to kick the can down the road. But the hearings must be held, and so they are.

I'll be back in the Senate on Wednesday for the Legislative Branch Appropriations' hearing on the Library of Congress and the Architect of the Capitol.

There's a handful of committee markups scheduled, including before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, the Senate Rules Committee, a Senate Energy and Natural Resources subcommittee, the Senate Judiciary Committee (law enforcement themed), and the Senate Commerce Committee. If this seems like a lot, it's because we're getting to the end of productive time to pass legislation and committees are working to push out their work product in the hopes of finding a legislative vehicle --- like the NDAA --- that these bills can ride to enactment.

As always, thank you for reading. Let me know whether you find these summaries helpful, and whether you'd like more or different information. Here's something to get you into the theme for this week.