The Senate confirmed yesterday by a vote of 62 – 37 Kirstjen Nielsen to lead the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). She replaces John Kelly, who resigned from that position to become the White House Chief of Staff. She served most recently as the White House Deputy Chief of Staff under Kelly. She also worked for Kelly before joining the White House staff as his chief of staff at DHS.
Category: 115th Congress
House Moves to Go to Conference This Week
Tonight, the House is expected to pass a motion to go to conference on the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. The Senate version of the measure was passed late Friday. The Senate is expected to follow suit, and the full list of conferees is expected shortly.
Another Short-term Funding Measure Unveiled
On Saturday, the House leadership unveiled a short-term spending bill that would keep the government funded through December 22. Because none of the 12 annual spending bills have been signed into law for FY2018, which started October 1, a continuing resolution (CR) was needed to keep the government open at current levels until negotiations over funding could be completed. The current CR expires at midnight, December 9. The new CR is designed to allow negotiators to make further progress on FY2018. Several Congressional leaders are acknowledging that another CR, beyond the one that would run through the 22nd, will likely be needed.
At this point, there is no agreement on how much money overall is even available for the federal budget in FY2018, making decisions on the size of each individual bill even more difficult to reach. Without a compromise on a total spending level for FY2018 that would increase the current budget caps in place, both defense and non-defense programs would see cuts below the FY2017 levels.
Republicans will need help from Democrats to pass this short-term CR but it is far from assured that the Democrats will support it.
Senate Approves Its Tax Bill; Conference Awaits
Early Saturday morning, the Senate approved by a vote of 51 to 49 its version of the tax overhaul bill. In the end, Bob Corker (R-TN) was the only Republican to join all Democrats in opposing the legislation.
The Senate leadership was making last-minute changes to the bill to win over a number of possible Republican holdouts, including Susan Collins (ME), Jeff Flake (Arizona), Ron Johnson (WI), and Steve Daines (MT). Democrats complained about the process that was to used to draft the original bill as well as the one that was used to make changes, including arguing that amendments were being written in by hand at the last minute.
The two chambers of Congress must now work out the differences between the two versions of the bill. The House is expected to formally call for a conference later today.
Senate Continues to Work on Tax Bill
The Senate continues to work on its version of the tax bill. With a number of Republican Senators raising concerns about a host of issues with the bill, the Republican leadership has tried to address them throughout this week. Late yesterday, the chamber was informed by the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Tax that the bill would add more than $1 trillion to the national debt, even after using a scoring methodology favored by the supporters of the bill.
The legislation continues to be changed on the floor.
Read more here, here, and here.