Congress
Speaker says House will vote ‘as quickly as possible’ on District of Columbia budget fix
Speaker Mike Johnson said he still intends to hold a vote House to vote to fix the District of Columbia’s $1 billion funding shortfall, after the stopgap government funding bill he spearheaded back in March inadvertently forced the city to confront sudden budget cuts.
“I talked to the mayor and told her that we would do it as quickly as possible,” Johnson told reporters Monday evening. “Reconciliation has taken all of our energy right now, but we’re not delaying this for some political purpose or any intentionality. It’s just a matter of schedule, even at this point.”
The Senate has already approved a measure to fix what many people believe to have been a drafting error in the package Congress passed to avoid a shutdown earlier this year. That package omitted key language included in previous funding bills allowing Washington to spend its own locally raised tax dollars through the end of the fiscal year.
Congress could be running out of time to act, however, to correct its error, as the city is already looking at making dramatic reductions in local services, from scaling back law enforcement capabilities to cutting resources for public education.
President Donald Trump has called on the House to take the measure up. In the meantime, Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser has presented herself as a partner to the White House, standing beside the president at a press conference earlier Monday to announce the NFL would host its draft on the National Mall in 2027.
House Oversight Chair James Comer, whose panel has jurisdiction over Washington affairs, said Monday he has also been personally pressing colleagues to rectify the funding issue, which could cause dramatic reductions in local services, from scaling back law enforcement capabilities to cutting resources for public education.
Comer, a Kentucky Republican, added that Bowser’s visit to the White House Monday was particularly helpful to the cause and their conversation about football gave the mayor an opportunity to advocate for the funding fix. Bowser recently announced plans to revitalize the long-vacant RFK Stadium as the new home to the Washington Commanders, who have been relegated to a stadium in Maryland for years.
“I’ve done everything I can to advocate for fixing it,” said Comer in an interview. “I’m willing to do everything in my committee, for the most part.”
Legislation to address the funding shortfall would likely have the votes to pass the House on a bipartisan basis, but the GOP’s most conservative flank could revolt and take procedural steps to block the chamber from considering the bill.
Some Republicans lawmakers have demanded Republican leaders include conditions like forcing Washington to reverse its policy allowing noncitizens to vote, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter. Those calls could continue.
And last week, House Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris of Maryland continued to defend Congress’ authority to block the capital city’s government from spending more than $1 billion of its own funding raised through local taxes.
“D.C. is complaining because they’re having their spending frozen. Come on, the average American thinks the governments are pretty wasteful, and I think they’d applaud a freezing spending,” Harris told reporters. “Read the Constitution. The federal government has the authority over the federal enclave. Period. Full stop. That’s it.”
Congress
Johnson says he has the votes to pass the GOP megabill
Speaker Mike Johnson predicted Thursday morning he had the votes to pass Republicans’ domestic policy megabill and would lose only “one or two” GOP lawmakers ahead of a self-imposed July 4 deadline.
“We’ll get this. We’ll land this plane before July 4,” he told reporters.
GOP leaders are barreling toward a final passage vote on the megabill as soon as this afternoon after pulling an all-nighter to advance the bill over the initial opposition of conservative holdouts upset at changes the Senate made to the package. Still, Johnson told reporters that while GOP lawmakers needed “time to digest” the Senate’s changes, many of their concerns were allayed with the help of President Donald Trump and his administration.
“The president helped answer questions. We had Cabinet secretaries involved, and experts in all the fields, and I think they got there,” he said.
He brushed aside concerns about Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), a purple-district lawmaker who was the sole lawmaker to oppose the procedural vote, saying he “tried to encourage him to get to a yes” though Johnson acknowledged Fitzpatrick has “got a number of things he’s just concerned about.”
The final vote has been delayed by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ so-called magic minute, or the unlimited speaking time granted to party leaders that’s been stretched into its sixth hour. Jeffries could break the all-time record set by then-House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who spoke for about eight and a half hours in 2021 to delay passage of Democrats’ domestic policy package.
Congress
Conservatives: Trump won our megabill votes by promising crackdown on renewable energy credits
Hard-line House conservatives said President Donald Trump assured them his administration would strictly enforce rules for wind or solar projects to qualify for the tax credits under the Inflation Reduction Act — a pledge that persuaded them to back the party’s megabill.
“What he’s going to do is use his powers as chief executive to make sure that the companies that apply for solar credits, as an example, he’s going to make sure that they’re doing what they say when they say they’ve started construction,” Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), a member of the House Freedom Caucus, said on CNBC on Thursday morning. “He’s going to make sure they’ve done that.”
The Senate passed its version of Republicans’ budget reconciliation bill earlier this week that included compromise language on the phaseout of incentives for solar and wind generation projects under the Democrats’ 2022 climate law.
The language gave projects one year to begin construction to claim the current tax credit, while projects that start later would need to be placed into service by 2027. That marked a shift from the language in the House version, H.R. 1 (119), supported by conservative hard-liners that only would provide 60 days for projects to begin construction.
Conservatives also opposed a “safe harbor” clause allowing projects to qualify for the credits if they begin construction by incurring 5 percent of the total cost of the work.
Norman, who voted to proceed to a final vote on the measure, said that Trump gave assurances that changes were going to be made, “particularly with getting permits,” although he did not provide further details. And while the president can’t remove the subsidies, Trump’s pledge on enforcement of the changes helped win support from conservatives.
“They wanted to put when construction began [as] when the time frame would extend from, like the wind and solar. We wanted date of service, which means they can’t take a backhoe out there and dig a ditch and say that’s construction,” he said. “So things like that the president is going to enforce.”
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) also said Thursday that Trump heard conservatives’ “concerns about the energy sector” and confirmed the administration would vigorously enforce construction dates for the phaseout of the credits.
“That was huge,” Burchett said.
The White House did not immediately return a request for comment Thursday.
Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.
Congress
Jeffries calls out Republicans over Medicaid ahead of final megabill vote
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is blasting Republican colleagues over Medicaid as he issues extended remarks ahead of the final GOP megabill vote.
Jeffries is utilizing his so-called “magic minute” to read off letters sent in by individuals in each state who rely on benefits that potentially hang in the balance as a result of the megabill’s provisions.
After reading a story from Arizona and criticizing Rep. Juan Ciscomani (R-Ariz), Jeffries told the chamber: “I’m still in the A section right now, so strap in.”
He read another story from a constituent in GOP Rep. David Valadao’s district in California, which Jeffries said has the highest concentration of Medicaid recipients in the country. The writer’s son has Down syndrome and autism and lives at home with aging parents. He requires in-home care, which is provided through a Medicaid service that could be threatened.
Jeffries said his goal in reading out these stories is to “lift up the voices of every day Americans all across the country.”
“This one big ugly Republican bill has put a target on their back,” Jeffries said. “This is a question for so many individuals of life and death … It is so extraordinary that in the middle of the night, Americans face a bill that will target their healthcare.”
The minority leader is also hinting at the vulnerability of certain Republicans who are voting to advance the bill in potentially toss up districts. Jeffries said one letter came from someone in a district “currently represented by Congressman Gabe Evans — currently represented.”
Speaker Mike Johnson predicted Jeffries would speak for an hour, but it’s unclear how long the speech will go on.
“I’m going to take my time,” Jeffries declared to applause from Democrats on the floor.
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