Senate Returns to Advance Trump's Spy Chief Pick as House Begins Five-Week Recess
The Senate reconvenes Monday afternoon to hold a make-or-break procedural vote on Jay Clayton's nomination as director of national intelligence, while the House has left Washington until late August after a burst of party-line votes on the Iran war and a member stock-trading ban.
Congress enters the week split between chambers. The House is now out until August 31st, ostensibly for a "district work period" and campaigning, while the Senate will remain in town for the next two weeks. That leaves the Senate as the center of activity, and its first order of business Monday is a contested nomination.
At 5:30 p.m. Monday, the Senate is scheduled to hold a roll call vote on the motion to invoke cloture on Executive Calendar #833, Walter Clayton, of New York, to be Director of National Intelligence. "Cloture" is the procedural step to cut off debate and move toward a final confirmation vote, which could follow a couple of days later. Thune filed cloture on the nomination after the Senate Intelligence Committee advanced it 9-8 along party lines. Clayton, a former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman and currently the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, would replace acting director Bill Pulte. His path narrowed after a contentious hearing. All eight Democrats on the panel voted against Clayton after a hearing in which he repeatedly declined to say outright that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election. Clayton instead told senators multiple times that the election was "certified" for Biden. His confirmation is also tied to a stalled effort to renew FISA Section 702, a foreign-surveillance authority that lapsed earlier this year.
The House's final days before recess produced several party-line actions that now sit in the Senate's lap. Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., kept his conference together to pass several priority items before members left Thursday, but how much of that legislation the Senate will take up is a different question. On the Iran war, the two chambers diverged. The majority of voting members in both chambers signaled it is time to bring U.S. troops home; the House, for the second time, formally called on Trump to end the war, approving 214-208 a nonbinding concurrent resolution. In the Senate, a 47-49 vote fell just short of discharging a binding joint resolution (S.J.Res. 180) by Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md.
The House also moved on a long-discussed ethics measure. Members approved a bill to rein in their own ability to trade stocks — a widely popular idea that fell to a party-line vote — that would ban members of Congress, their spouses and dependent children from buying new stocks.
The biggest looming fight is over money. The House adopted a GOP-backed budget resolution along party lines, taking the first step toward a $95 billion reconciliation package focused mostly on the Iran war. Reconciliation is a filibuster-proof process that lets the majority pass certain budget measures with a simple majority. But Thune is resisting. "As I've said before you got to get to 50, and I can't count to 50 right now on a budget resolution," Thune told reporters. President Trump pressed Thune on Friday to immediately take up the House-passed resolution despite Thune's statement that it doesn't have the votes.
Beyond the nomination, the Senate's near-term agenda is crowded. At the top of Thune's list is government funding; with appropriators deadlocked over spending levels, he is eyeing a stopgap measure to keep agencies funded past the Sept. 30 deadline and give lawmakers more time to complete the 12 annual appropriations bills.
Highlights: - The Senate is set for a 5:30 p.m. Monday cloture vote on Walter "Jay" Clayton (Executive Calendar #833), Trump's pick for director of national intelligence, teed up after the Intelligence Committee advanced him 9-8 on a party-line vote. - Before leaving town, the House voted 214-208 on a nonbinding resolution by Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., urging Trump to end the war in Iran; a parallel Senate discharge effort by Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., failed 47-49. - The House adopted a GOP budget resolution along party lines, teeing up a roughly $95 billion reconciliation bill focused on the Iran war — but Majority Leader John Thune says the votes aren't there in the Senate.