Congress returns from its week-long recess on Monday as focus shifts to the Senate and its expected consideration this month of its version of the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act via budget reconciliation, the process critical to moving an extension of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) and other Republican policy priorities (e.g., Trump campaign tax pledges, Defense and border security spending, domestic energy production, mandatory spending reductions, and an increase in the debt limit) on a party-line simple majority vote.
The House was able to pass its version of the reconciliation legislation (H.R. 1) prior to recess by a vote of 215-214. Now, the ball is in the Senate’s court, with ten of its committees having received reconciliation instructions via the FY25 Budget Resolution, passage of which unlocked the reconciliation process. Please find below an outlook for the coming work period which runs to the end of June when the House and Senate leave for the one-week Independence Day Recess. Note that the House is also out of session the week of June 16, while the Senate plans to be out of session on Thursday and Friday, June 19 and 20, in celebration of the Juneteenth holiday.
SENATE
The Senate’s focus for the month of June will be on passing budget reconciliation, completion of S.1582 (GENIUS Act), and continued nomination votes.
Nominations. The work period was slated to begin this week with votes on four nominations, including that of Jared Isaacman to serve as the Administrator of NASA. Isaacman’s nomination has been pending since January, but on Saturday President Trump announced that he would pull the nomination and would announce a new nominee shortly. The first vote of the week is Monday at 5:30 p.m. on cloture on the nomination of Michael Duffey to be Under Secretary of Defense of Acquisition and Sustainment. Once Duffey is confirmed, the Senate will spend the rest of Tuesday considering the nominations of Allison Hooker (Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs) and Dale Marks (Assistant Secretary of Defense).
Additional Trump Nominations. When the Senate returned to session in late April following the Easter Recess, there was a backlog of about 35 Administration nominations pending on the Executive Calendar; since then, the list has ballooned to nearly 100. Almost all of these nominees are limited to no more than two hours of post cloture debate on the Senate floor, and we expect the Senate to continue to prioritize Administration personnel between legislating over the course of June. Note: President Trump has only recently submitted a handful of judicial nominations to the Senate but when more follow, it will ultimately create an additional pipeline of activity for an already-crowded floor schedule.
GENIUS Act. It took two votes and several rounds of protracted negotiations for a super majority of Republicans and Democrats to agree to begin debate on Senator Hagerty’s GENIUS Act-the House counterpart to which is the STABLE Act-which regulates the issuance and exchange of stable coins (digital currency pegged to the value of another asset, such as the U.S. dollar). After a near party-line first attempt failed, less than two weeks later 69 Senators (51 Republicans and 18 Democrats) voted to proceed to the bill, despite opposition from Senate Minority Leader Schumer and Senate Banking Committee Ranking Member Warren.
The Senate expects to return to consideration of GENIUS this week, with an eye towards securing agreement to vote on some amendments prior to Leader Thune moving to invoke cloture on the bill to bring the process to a close. Leader Thune has stated repeatedly that he would like a robust amendment process for this bill, but it will take the cooperation of 100 Senators to achieve that.
To that end, hotlines were sent out prior to recess asking for Members to consent to a long list of potential amendments. The hotline received multiple objections and discussions will continue on a path forward. Not all amendments will receive consent for votes, with Sen. Marshall’s Credit Card Competition Act (CCCA) receiving a lot of attention. The Senate has not had a robust amendment process very often in the last few years and Members will need to cooperate for one to occur here. We anticipate further hotlines to run as Members narrow down the universe of possible amendments prior to voting on GENIUS, presumably before the Senate moves on to consider its version of reconciliation.
Reconciliation. With the House having successfully moved its bill before recess, Senate Republicans will continue to meet with frequency and purpose as they make final decisions relating to both Senate process and substance; those decisions will continue to be made on a committee-by-committee basis with guidance from Leadership and input from Members. The Senate GOP’s goal is ambitious: passage of the legislation in mid-June, so as to leave enough time to work out any differences with the House ahead of enacting final legislation prior to July 4.
Similar to the House, the Senate has ten committees with reconciliation instructions. Unlike the House, the Senate is expected to hold few markups, with most of the Senate GOP’s changes to the House bill expected to take place via amendment on the Senate floor. In order to do that, Senators must work out substantive changes necessary ahead of the floor process to garner the support of 50-plus GOP Members, while also continuing to run the procedural gauntlets necessitated by the reconciliation process.
There is near consensus among House and Senate Republicans on much of the substance of the legislation. Still, there will be some changes to ensure provisions comply with the Senate’s Byrd Rule, a multi-part procedural test which limits what can be included in reconciliation legislation. There will also be changes as GOP Senators find their own consensus in a number of critical areas, particularly on the tax cut and spending cut portions of the House bill.
For example, Senate Republicans will likely make the business tax provisions in the House bill permanent in law rather than subject to sunset after five years; scrutinize the House SALT cap increase; and carefully review the House’s spending offsets, both tax (e.g., Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), provisions impacting inbound companies via Sec. 899, etc.) and non-tax (e.g., Medicaid, SNAP, etc.). The Senate GOP will also look for additional opportunities to cut spending not included in the House bill. Changes are not likely to be radical, but similar to the House process last week, are necessary to reflect the will of the Senate Republican Caucus.
In the Senate, process often dictates and/or informs substance. While the floor procedure is not overly time consuming-up to 20 hours of floor debate equally divided, followed by a “vote-a-rama” during which Members may offer germane amendments that comply with reconciliation rules for simple majority votes-the process to get the legislation in shape for the floor requires considerably more attention. That process has been underway in an informal manner for most of the year but kicked into high gear prior to House passage of its bill, during which time it was scrubbed for any Byrd violations that could be fatal to reconciliation in the Senate (e.g., changes to the Social Security Trust Fund or changes made that impact the jurisdiction of a Senate committee that hasn’t received reconciliation instructions). As a result, some provisions were changed and some were dropped out of the House bill prior to passage.
The procedural focus now shifts to remaining potential Byrd violations, meaning those that can be scrubbed from the bill after it has been received from the House without fatally harming reconciliation’s fast-track privileges in the Senate. This part of the parliamentary process has also been ongoing in an informal manner for some time, but is time consuming and involves the Parliamentarians’ office, GOP and Democratic Leadership, the Budget Committee, and each instructed committee. As the Senate moves to consider reconciliation legislation, the more formal “Byrd Bath” process will occur and it is the GOP’s hope to begin those sessions quickly. Ultimately, the Byrd process will impact some provisions in the House-passed bill, likely including the state AI regulatory moratorium, energy permitting language, and potentially other items where budgetary impacts are deemed to be merely incidental to the policy change.
In sum, while GOP Leadership hopes to both get to Member consensus and jump through procedural hurdles in the next two weeks, the speed at which both of those things occur will dictate when the reconciliation bill comes to the floor. While that could be prior to Juneteenth, there’s also a scenario where it could occur late in the month.
HOUSE
On the heels of having successfully passed H.R. 1, the One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act, the House will turn its eye to spending issues in June. Driven by growing outcries from online conservative influencers, more and more GOP Members are clamoring for House Leadership to codify President Trump’s Executive Orders and enact spending cuts in line with recommendations from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Rescissions. As such, the long rumored first package of spending rescissions are expected to be formally transmitted from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to Congress sometime this week-targeting PBS, NPR, and USAID-from which point House Leadership will work to whip sufficient support to adopt the $9.4 billion package. Per the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, transmittal by the Administration both triggers a 45-day clock for Congress (House and Senate) to act on the package, and allows the Administration to withhold the corresponding funds for the same period. OMB has not taken impoundment via “pocket rescissions” off the table should Congress be unable to pass this and potential future rescissions packages.
CRAs and Other Rule Bills. The House will also look to take up Senate-passed CRAs, including S.J. Res. 7 (pertaining to the FCC’s E-Rate program) and potentially others. They are also expected to consider a number of rule bills, including H.R. 2966, H.R. 2931, H.R. 2987, H.R. 2483, H.R. 2056, H.R. 2096, H.R. 884, most of which touch upon the issue of illegal immigration.
Finally, during the last week in June, the House is expected to begin formal consideration of FY26 appropriations bills, kicking off what is likely to be a contentious summer appropriations cycle. The House Appropriations Committee begins the process this week and next with anticipated markups of FY26 spending bills for Military Construction-VA, Agriculture/FDA, Homeland Security, and Defense.
National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The House Armed Services Committee had been rumored to mark up the annual NDAA in late June, but that timeline is expected to slip to July as the reconciliation process continues to play out and Congress awaits more detail from the Administration on its FY26 budget request.
OUTLOOK/ANALYSIS. All eyes will be squarely on the Senate this month, where action on the House-passed reconciliation bill is pending. Speaker Johnson has issued public warnings to Senate Leadership not to significantly alter the package, signaling that any substantive changes could jeopardize final passage or trigger a drawn-out reconciliation fight. Still, it’s a big, complex bill, and the Senate will put its own stamp on the substance to have sufficient Member support to pass it. However, such changes will not be made in a vacuum; there is an underlying sensitivity to the fact that, like the Senate, the House has a delicate balance. We expect the Senate to proceed accordingly, continuing the coordinated approach that has defined the reconciliation process thus far.
Just as the House must allow the Senate to work its will, so too will the Senate need to find agreement with the House and the White House on any changes it makes. It remains true that the balance achieved in the House is delicate. Still, we think the Senate will be able to act and that the House and Senate will be able to resolve differences-likely through an informal conference-this summer.
To this point, congressional Republicans have defied skeptics and remained on track with this ambitious legislation. This upcoming work period is critical if this goal is to remain on track. While all involved would like to see final legislation enacted into law by July 4, the process takes time and while July 4 is a possibility, so too is later in July. Fortuitously, the looming debt limit “X date” is projected not to occur before August, which should help compel final legislation by late July.
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