TODAY IN CONGRESS (C-SPAN TV SCHEDULE) & More:
I am posting the daily C-Span TV schedule, when I can, for those here who may be interested in tuning in to see what Congress is up to. Also, I have provided the results of the previous day’s votes on some significant Bills/Resolutions, when Congress was in session the previous day and an update on the status of numerous Congressional Subpoenas and other Committee action.
Here’s today’s schedule with the events I think may be the most interesting in bold. You can watch C-Span HERE. NOTE: Sometimes C-Span posts additional Congressional events not on my list, later in the day.
House:
12:00 pm — House Morning Session (General Speeches.)
2:00 pm — House Session (The House will resume work on a spending package totaling $982.8 billion in discretionary spending for FY 2020 for four of the 12 appropriations bills: Labor-HHS-Education, Defense, State-Foreign Operations, and Energy-Water.)
Senate:
9:30 am — Senate Health Committee Hearing on Health Care Costs (The Senate Health Committee holds a hearing examining bipartisan legislation aimed to lower the cost of health care.)
9:30 am — Senate Energy & Natural Resources Hearing on Public Lands Management (Interior Department and U.S. Forest Service officials testify on the management of public lands at a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing.)
10:00 am — Senate Session (The Senate resumes debate on the nomination of Sean Cairncross of Minnesota to be CEO of Millennium Challenge Corporation. MCC is an independent U.S. foreign assistance agency created in 2004 working to reduce global poverty through economic growth.)
10:15 am — Senate Finance Committee Hearing on Administration Trade Policy (U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer testifies before the Senate Finance Committee on the administration’s trade strategy and the United States-Mexico-Canada agreement.)
2:30 pm — Senate Foreign Relations Hearing on Russia & Ukraine (The Senate Foreign Relations Committee holds a hearing on Russia’s activities in Ukraine, five years after Ukraine’s 2014 political revolution and Russia’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula.)
Yesterday’s Votes: There were no votes in the House or Senate yesterday.
Comments:
Today’s Events –
House — All the activity in the House today will be on the House Floor where the introduction of Amendments to 4 of the 12 Appropriations Bills and the “Vote-A-Rama” on those amendments will continue. They voted on 70 amendments last week and under the “Open Rule” who knows how many more they will get to this week. But I do anticipate a vote on final passage of the 4 Appropriations Bills themselves sometime this week.
Senate — Today’s Senate hearing on lowering health care costs might be interesting. Only for amusement purposes of course to see what phoney schemes Republicans put forth since they have no real interest in any sort of meaningful health care legislation.
SUBPOENA WARS —
House Judiciary Committee Barr Subpoena — No change. As Committee members and staff continue to review the documents put forth by the DoJ (i.e., FBI 302 Reports compiled during the Mueller investigation), we continue to wait for Judiciary Committee Chairman Nadler to decide if or when he will use the authorization granted him by the Full House last week and drag Barr to Court to enforce the subpoena for the unredacted Mueller Report and the rest of the all underlying documents. Most likely its a question of “when” and not “if”.
House Judiciary Committee McGahn Subpoena — No change. Unlike Barr, it appears that Nadler is ready to use his new authority to drag McGahn into Court for defying his subpoena. It appears Nadler is simply waiting for Committee lawyers to draft their arguments. Hopefully, we will see a Court filing this week.
House Judiciary Committee Mueller Testimony — No Change. The Committee is still in negotiations with Mueller’s team about his testimony. However, on Tuesday Judiciary Committee Chairman Nadler said that he sees “Mueller testifying by 'end of summer'”. Time will tell.
House Judiciary Committee Hicks and Donaldson Subpoenas — Hope Hicks has agreed to testify before the House Judiciary Committee behind closed doors. According to this Reuter's Report (filed today):
“Hicks, who was one of Trump’s closest aides during the 2016 campaign and the first 14 months of his presidency, was subpoenaed to testify and is due to appear at 9 a.m. (1300 GMT) on Wednesday, the committee said. It will be a closed-door interview with lawmakers, and the committee will release a transcript afterward.”
LIVE would be better, but a transcript is better than nothing.
House Intelligence Committee Subpoena — No change. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) Continues to hold off on enforcement action against the Justice Department since it has agreed to turn over documents related to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. Schiff said that the department has agreed to turn over 12 categories of counterintelligence and foreign intelligence materials. So we are waiting to see what the Committee will do after it reviews the documents from Barr.
House Financial Services Committee and House Intelligence Committee Deutsche Bank and Capital One Subpoenas (Trump’s Banking Records) — No change. A federal judge ruled from the bench and rejected President Trump's effort to block congressional subpoenas seeking his financial records from Deutsche Bank and Capital One. But the Trump Organization has filed an Appeal. The appeals court said Friday it will speedily consider President Donald Trump’s challenge to congressional subpoenas seeking financial records from two banks with which he did business. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan issued a brief order setting a schedule for written arguments to be submitted by July 18, with oral arguments to soon follow.
House Oversight and Reform Committee Subpoena (Financial Records) — No change. A three-judge panel on the appeals court will hear oral arguments on July 12 to determine whether the accounting firm Mazars can hand over Trump's financial records to House Democrats. The court also set a series of deadlines spanning June and July for parties to submit filings arguing their positions in the case.
House Oversight and Reform Committee Subpoena — No change. The House Oversight Committee voted last week to recommend to the Full House that Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross be held in Contempt of Congress for for refusal to comply with subpoenas to provide documents and information related to the addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 census. The contempt resolution includes citations for both civil and criminal contempt. It is unclear what will happen now that the committee has voted on the resolution. Depending on how the Departments of Justice or Commerce respond, House Democrats could go to the floor with both criminal and civil contempt. They could also drop criminal before going to the floor if some accommodation happens. According to a committee aide, a criminal contempt vote would have to go through the floor. However, civil contempt could go through the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group, which is made up of the three highest-ranked House Democrats and two highest-ranked House Republicans.
House Ways & Means Committee Subpoena (Trump’s Tax Returns) — We are waiting for the Committee to enforce its subpoena against Mnuchin and the IRS, and get this dispute into Court. In the meantime, however, we have this:
“The Justice Department released an opinion Friday that backed up the Treasury Department’s decision not to give Congress copies of President Donald Trump’s tax returns, concluding that the “true aim” was to make the documents public and that “is not a legitimate legislative purpose.”
The Office of Legal Counsel opinion comes after Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin refused to comply with a subpoena for Trump’s tax returns from House Ways and Means Chairman Richard E. Neal last month.
The OLC acknowledges that a law does not require Neal to state a purpose when requesting tax returns.
But the agency concluded that Congress can’t give itself the right to compel information that does not serve a legitimate legislative purpose, and that Neal’s request was “pretextual.”
What a surprise, Trump’s Roy Cohn (AG Barr) directs his legal staff to file an opinion in support Trump’s personal Treasurer to withhold his taxes from Congress. Interesting to note that they admit that the law does not require the Committee Chair to state a reason for requesting the tax returns, but then state that the tax returns can be withheld since the committee has no legitimate legislative reason to request them. I can’t wait to see how the Judge in this case reacts to that twisted logic.
Congressional Scolding: Last week, a House Judiciary subcommittee held a hearing on reauthorizing the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund. Among the witnesses were several first responders and survivors suffering from 9/11-related illnesses. Also providing testimony was comedian Jon Stewart, a longtime advocate for 9/11 responders and survivors. Mr. Stewart in his opening statement commented on the small number of the committee’s 41 members in attendance. The Victim Compensation Fund was reauthorized in 2015 but was set to expire in December 2020 without congressional action. If you have not seen this already, you can watch Stewart’s entire testimony HERE courtesy of C-Span. It’s bound to make your blood boil. The day after Stewart's testimony, the House Judiciary Subcommittee approved the bill, which still needs to be approved by the full House and the Senate.
Over the weekend, Stewart continued his Congressional attack by taking it to the chief roadblock to the 911 First Responder Fund legislation, Mitch McConnell, old Turtle Boy himself.
Stewart, on Sunday, said he was concerned the bill wouldn’t pass in the Senate, specifically because Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has not supported it.
“In terms of getting the 9/11 bills passed, Mitch McConnell has been the white whale of this since 2010,” Stewart said.
In response McConnell said:
...he hadn't looked at the bill recently.
"We've always dealt with that in the past in a compassionate way, and I assume we will again," McConnell said. "But I haven't looked at it lately."
Stewart went on to say:
...that while the bill has bipartisan support and is “not a Republican-Democrat issue,” he thought it would stall because of Republican opposition.
“Not all Republicans oppose this, but everyone who has opposed it is a Republican, and it’s unacceptable,” he said on Fox News. “They’ve done it now for years, Sen. McConnell — Lindsey Graham is the one who is the head of Judiciary; he’s the one who’s going to be negotiating, whether it’s 5 or 10 years.
Although the ball on this is now rolling in that the House Committee has passed the Bill, one thing that bothers me is why it took so long? This Bill has been bopping around the House for months and it is just getting through a subcommittee now after a well deserved bitch out by Jon Stewart. The House should have passed this months ago, it’s a NO BRAINER! Stewart could have then appeared before a Senate committee and bitched out the Republicans for their slow walking instead of bitching out a Dem. lead House Committee. Anyway, hopefully it will get through the House this week without further unnecessary delay.
Thanks for Reading!