{"id":3127,"date":"2024-12-02T14:36:13","date_gmt":"2024-12-02T14:36:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/congress-preps-for-spending-sprint-amid-biden-pardon-fallout\/"},"modified":"2024-12-02T14:36:13","modified_gmt":"2024-12-02T14:36:13","slug":"congress-preps-for-spending-sprint-amid-biden-pardon-fallout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/congress-preps-for-spending-sprint-amid-biden-pardon-fallout\/","title":{"rendered":"Congress preps for spending sprint amid Biden pardon fallout"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Lawmakers are back for the annual legislative end-of-year sprint, in what should be a busy three weeks in the waning days of Joe Biden\u2019s presidency.<\/p>\n<p><b>The most immediate issue: <\/b>Congress faces a Dec. 20 government funding deadline. While a shutdown isn&#8217;t atop anyone&#8217;s holiday wish list, there\u2019s significant disagreement about how long a short-term government funding patch should last into President-elect Donald Trump&#8217;s new term \u2014 and what other priorities, like tens of billions in sought-after disaster aid, might hitch a ride to that bill. With lawmakers now back in Washington post-Thanksgiving, look for some decisions to start being made on the way forward.<\/p>\n<p><b>Some other pressing questions: <\/b>The Senate returns Monday while the House comes back Tuesday. Here&#8217;s some other key topics lawmakers are such to face questions about:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Biden\u2019s pardon of Hunter:<\/b> The president\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2024\/12\/02\/hunter-biden-pardon-nixon-00192101\">parting \u201cfull and unconditional\u201d pardon<\/a> of his son Hunter will continue to draw scrutiny over its scope and breadth \u2014 particularly after Joe Biden denied repeatedly for months that he would make it.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li><b>Kash Patel for FBI director:<\/b> Republican senators are sure to get a barrage of inquiries about whether <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2024\/11\/30\/trump-kash-patel-fbi-director-nomination-transition-00192046\">the staunch Trump loyalist<\/a> \u2014 who\u2019s floated conspiracy theories about the 2020 election won by Biden and has called for the removal of Trump enemies from the government \u2014 can be confirmed to lead the FBI. Just three GOP senators could defect with JD Vance breaking ties, assuming unified Democratic opposition.\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Beyond those front-of-mind topics, <\/b>there&#8217;s a few other notable events to keep an eye on this week:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><b>Elon and Vivek to Washington: <\/b>Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are heading to Capitol Hill on Thursday to meet with Republicans about reform ideas for their new\u00a0so-called Department of Government Efficiency.<\/li>\n<li><b>Remember that Ethics report? <\/b>It has slipped from the headlines since former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) withdrew from consideration as Trump\u2019s attorney general, but the House Ethics Committee is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/live-updates\/2024\/11\/20\/congress\/ethics-panel-does-not-agree-to-release-gaetz-report-00190655\">due to meet again on Dec. 5<\/a> to mull whether to release its completed report on the former member.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li><b>Final meeting on Trump assassination: <\/b>The task force set up in the aftermath of the assassination attempts against Trump <a href=\"https:\/\/taskforce.house.gov\/task-force-activity\/hearings-0?utm_source=Sailthru&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=12\/2\/24%20%20AM:&amp;utm_term=Punchbowl%20AM%20and%20Active%20Subscribers%20from%20Memberful%20Combined\">meets for the final time on Thursday<\/a>.\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lawmakers are back for the annual legislative end-of-year sprint, in what should be a busy three weeks in the waning days of Joe Biden\u2019s presidency. The most immediate issue: Congress faces a Dec. 20 government funding deadline. While a shutdown isn&#8217;t atop anyone&#8217;s holiday wish list, there\u2019s significant disagreement about how long a short-term government [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3127\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}