Congress is scheduled for about three more weeks of work between now and the midterm elections, none of it before mid-September. Early Saturday morning, the Senate wrapped up its work for the summer, leaving a large to-do list for that brief pre-election period, when traditionally parties in power don’t want to vote on anything controversial if they can help it.
Not only is it unlikely that the entire legislative pileup would be resolved before the election, but some of it—like the SAVE America Act, which would require proof of citizenship to register to vote, a valid photo ID to cast a ballot, and a significant limit to voting by mail—would be a severe challenge to implement even if it were passed in the narrow space when Congress returns to work. Voter registration deadlines begin to close in early October, though some states allow registration right up until Election Day, and early voting, including by mail, begins as soon as September 18 in some states.
The SAVE Act did not get called up in the Senate before the recess, though senators did vote on a narrower bill that would have required voter ID for all federal elections. That failed on a straight party-line vote.
A Plan B would be to pass the so-called “reconciliation 3.0,” which the House advanced with $10 billion earmarked for states that implement elements of the SAVE Act. But this would be even more impossible to implement before the midterms. Even if it miraculously passed in September—the Senate did not bring up the budget resolution that would begin the reconciliation process because they did not have 50 votes for passage—states would have to affirmatively seek the funding, and the states where President Trump actually wants voter ID and proof-of-citizenship rules implemented (36 states already require some form of documentation at the polls) are mostly run by Democrats and would almost certainly not accept the money. So before Congress even comes back, the opportunity for election-related changes affecting this midterm are slim to none.
The budget resolution may get called back up in September, because its biggest element is funding for the Pentagon, in part to replenish the desperately low supply of munitions chewed up by the Iran war. The budget bill also has aid for farmers and the aforementioned grants for state changes to the voting system. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) issued a budget blueprint on Friday, but it’s significantly different from what the House passed last month, in particular allowing for more military funding.
A budget resolution and reconciliation process would take up practically all of the time left on the calendar before the midterms, since the budget resolution would require a “vote-a-rama” where Democrats get a chance to offer amendments (threatened Republican senators have no interest in taking these votes), several committee reports with language for their parts of the bill, rulings from the Senate parliamentarian on whether the contents have a primary budgetary purpose, and another vote-a-rama amendment process before final passage. And that’s before the House gets a look and negotiations are conducted.
The more likely scenario is that reconciliation 3.0 waits for the lame-duck session after the midterms, when any number of possible scenarios could derail it. A big Democratic victory would focus attention on what Republicans can do with their last grasp on power, but they may have to spend time on last-chance judicial confirmations (particularly if Sam Alito or Clarence Thomas resigns from the Supreme Court). Plus, Republicans may have no interest in showing up for a lame-duck session, and with tight margins every vote counts.
If reconciliation is on the back burner, what’s on tap for September? First would be a stopgap resolution to fund the government from October 1 until December, which the Senate passed with 90 votes early Saturday. The House would need to follow suit. The Senate bill prevents the Office of Management and Budget from finalizing a rule that would give the executive branch the power to unilaterally cancel grants deemed out of line with administration priorities. In practice, this provision does very little, as it only prevents finalization through the completion of the stopgap funding on December 11, and OMB can keep working on the measure.
And of course, the Trump administration has completely politicized grants already regardless of what the rules say. Instead of using the budget as a way to impose guardrails and restore the congressional power of the purse, Democrats signed off on this resolution with a non-reform. Both sides don’t want a shutdown, however, so something extending funding is likely to pass, maybe the only thing on the Senate docket that will.
The House will also need to take up a Senate-passed Russia sanctions bill that was a priority of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). This drew 86 votes, but incredibly, it includes a provision that increases Trump’s ability to use unilateral tariffs as economic warfare against countries he does not like. It allows a president to impose 100 percent tariffs on the five largest importers of Russian oil and gas, not just for energy supplies but everything.
Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) got a handshake agreement that countries which fall out of the top five get their tariffs removed, but Trump has exploited virtually every tariff power Congress has delegated to the president to ludicrous extremes. At a time when Democrats are screaming about the misuse of tariffs, providing the president with more ammunition for future tariff actions is a bizarre choice. An amendment to remove these tariffs entirely only got 32 votes, with 15 Democrats voting against it.
As my colleague Eleanor Davis-Diver reported, the crypto industry’s top priority of the session, the deregulatory CLARITY Act, didn’t get a vote before recess. Some Republican boosters think they can try again in September, but CLARITY is competing with everything else above. That includes the Protect College Sports Act, which was expected to get a vote after the Big Ten and SEC agreed to endorse it late last month. It didn’t, but Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) set up votes on it for September.
That bill would revamp the system for paying college athletes by increasing the money earmarked for players. It also regulates so-called name, image, and likeness deals and a number of other processes, like the number of teams in conferences and the transfer portal. Like a failed House bill called the SCORE Act, it also contains antitrust exemptions for the NCAA and does not regard student-athletes as employees. For that reason, labor unions and the Congressional Black Caucus have remained steadfastly opposed, narrowing the window for majority support in September.
It’s not a guarantee that anything the Senate did in its August rush will become law, at least not in its current form. But as long as the Senate is a confirmation factory—clearing Attorney General Todd Blanche and practically every other executive appointment—Trump will keep trying to take care of the rest of the government on his own.
