Good morning and welcome to a new addition to GovTrack's updates on what's happening in Congress this week. I'm your host, Daniel Schuman, and I spent waaay too much time thinking about the First Branch of Government. Join me as we start on our gov trek. (Sorry)

In the House of Representatives This Week

The House of Representatives had ginned up an easy week of legislation focused on veterans and household energy, but in light of the hostilities in the Middle East, House Republican leadership scrapped those plans. Instead they announced wide-ranging bills and resolutions on Iran and terrorism.

There's also a hold-over from last week's vote on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, as members may consider the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act, a bipartisan bill its co-sponsors say would protect Americans' personal data from unnecessary government surveillance by preventing the government from purchasing information about Americans that would otherwise require a warrant.

Not announced, but still possible is consideration of funding resolutions related to supplying Israel and/or Ukraine and/or Taiwan with armaments and other items. This is a point of contention between the chambers, as the Senate has already passed a resupply bill, and House Republicans are split on whether or what they would want to fund. There's a non-zero chance that bringing the wrong bill to the floor will result in a vote to remove Mike Johnson as Speaker --- called a motion to vacate --- and it's unclear but possible some Dems might vote to keep him in place.

House Committees This Week

Committees in the House of Representatives will be very busy this week, with a grand total of 56 scheduled hearings and markups.

Seventeen hearings will be held by the Appropriations subcommittees, which have begun in earnest to hold hearings on the agencies they oversee. There are twelve subcommittees, and they are responsible for recommending funding levels for every aspect of government.

These meetings are a BFD, and senior administration officials often testify. For example, Attorney General Merrick Garland will testify before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, and Science on Tuesday morning, as well Secretary of Veteran Affairs Denis McDonough before the House Subcommittee on military construction and veterans affairs, and so on. If you watch closely, I'll be in the audience for the Legislative Branch Appropriations Subcommittee hearings.

Making matters fun is a case of musical chairs. The former chair of the House Rules committee, Tom Cole, just won a vote of his fellow Republicans to become the new chair of the House Appropriations Committee, and he took that position only last week. In turn, that caused a change in the line-up of the Appropriations subcommittee chairs, so many subcommittee's senior-most Republicans now have a new assignment even as the appropriations process for fiscal year 2025 is already underway. One additional thing under consideration is whether to change how the Appropriations Committee handles earmarks.

There appear to be two full committee markups of pending legislation, at House Judiciary and House Oversight, and a smattering of subcommittee markups. There's also a bunch of run-of-the-mill oversight hearings. Plus an unusual open meeting of the House Intelligence Committee.

In the Senate This Week

The Senate floor is currently working its way through some judicial nominees, although that was expected to turn to consideration of the House passed Foreign Intelligence Surveillance-related bill. However, it's expected that the House will belatedly send over notice of the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas; the House held that vote way back in February. If they do, the Senate has an obligation to take it up.

Senate Hearings This Week

Senate Committees will hold 33 meetings over the course of the week, all between Tuesday and Thursday. Among other things, that means that senators have to be in more than one place at the same time.

As for Senate hearings, the Armed Services Committee is holding the most hearings --- six --- probably as part of the ramp-up to consider the National Defense Authorization Act. The NDAA, as it is known by its friends, is a gigantic must-pass Christmas tree bill that authorizes funding for the Department of Defense and generally carries a hundred or so other laws into effect that are unrelated to defense.

The Senate Appropriations process has started as well, although it usually lags behind the House. There's four hearings scheduled, and you might note that Attorney General Merrick Garland will be testifying in the upper chamber on Wednesday, as well as the head of the Department of Homeland Security and the Secretary of Agriculture. The double header for AG Garland is a courtesy, so he doesn't have to prep twice. You'll see this on occasion for other agency heads.

The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a few hearings, including into various nominations, and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will mark up a bunch of bills and consider nominations. Most of the work of the authorizing committees will be looking at the president's proposed budget for agencies within their jurisdiction. They don't get to spend the money, of course, that's the job of appropriators, but the authorizing committees are necessary to provide legal authority for the agencies to operate.

So, what'd you think of this new addition to GovTrack's updates? Let us know what you liked, disliked, and what else you'd like to see included. Thanks for reading!