Political Report: 7/10/2018

July 10, 2018

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By Matt Vallone, Director of Research & Analysis

Main Story: Congress Returns to a Summer of Controversy

Both the House of Representatives and Senate return from their fourth of July recess to major pending fights over a Supreme Court nomination and, of more direct relevance to this piece, appropriations. While the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court will undoubtedly dominate the headlines, the next three weeks represent a critical period for this year’s appropriations process.

The House and Senate have already passed several relatively non-controversial appropriations bills, but the more contentious bills have yet to be voted on by either chamber. Similarly, there has been significant progress at the committee level, as the Senate Appropriations Committee has voted out all subcommittee bills and the House Appropriations Committee has advanced all but the Homeland Security and Labor-Health and Human Services bills. In order to avoid the need for a continuing resolution, or an eventual omnibus, major progress needs to be made on moving appropriations prior to July 26th, when the House goes into recess for the summer (the Senate will stay in session in order to confirm some of the administration’s judicial nominees and to prevent Democratic senators from campaigning). After that, Congress will only have three weeks in session (a meager 11 days for the House of Representatives) to pass funding to avoid a shutdown on September 30th.

Complicating matters is the need for conference meetings to hash out differences between the House and Senate bills. In the Senate, Republicans and Democrats have agreed to avoid placing policy riders in the appropriations bills as a way of avoiding controversies and moving the process forward. This has allowed the appropriations committee to pass all twelve bills out of committee. That truce has held on the floor, where an attempt to add a policy rider to the Energy & Water bill was defeated on a bipartisan vote. The House has not abided by any such agreement and has passed bills with policy riders that Senate Democrats will not support. Resolving those differences will undoubtedly push final passage of many of these bills past the end of the fiscal year.

House Activity – The House will move forward with a vote on another ‘minibus’ combining the Interior-Environment and Financial Services appropriations bills. They will also vote on a re-authorization of funding for the intelligence agencies.

Senate Activity – The Senate will continue to work on nominations this week while it prepares to approve President Trump’s nominee, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, to fill the seat of retiring Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy.

Government Activity Round-up

Although it’s not defense and aerospace relevant, the CBO has a new report looking how potential changes in economic outcomes would impact its various forecasts. This includes an Excel where you can experiment with different economic scenarios and see how that would impact budget forecasts. Full report (and workbook) here.

There is not much directly relevant to the Department of Defense from GAO in the past few weeks, but a report on June 26th produced a summary of the GAO’s testimony before the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee’s on Research, Technology, and Energy on AI titled, “Artificial Intelligence: Emerging Opportunities, Challenges, and Implications for Policy and Research”. The full piece is only 14 pages and provides a useful, high-level summary of the state of current AI technologies and potential policy issues. Well worth reading.

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For more information about this Political Report, contact mvallone@avascent.com.