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Speaker Johnson this week pulled the plug on bringing new legislation to the House floor due to building pressure on the Jeffery Epstein matter. Rogue Republican Thomas Massie of Kentucky, along with Democratic California Congressman Ro Khanna appeared to have enough votes on a discharge petition to force a vote on the House floor calling on the Trump Administration to release all files related to the Jeffery Epstein investigation and prior cases. As a result, a number of planned appropriations bills were not brought up for a vote on the House floor prior to the recess, which was originally scheduled to commence at the end of this week. The Transportation-Housing appropriations bill, which passed out of full committee last week, was a possible candidate for floor consideration. Over in the Senate, there was movement on individual appropriations bills, including the Transportation-Housing bill. This week the Senate voted to advance the FY 2026 MilCon-VA Appropriations bill to consideration on the floor. Several other bills have cleared the appropriations committee including: Agriculture, Legislative Branch and Commerce, Justice, State. The Transportation-Housing bill was approved in the full appropriations committee on Thursday morning, passing by a vote of 27-1. They are now ready to be taken up on the Senate floor. The Senate Transportation-Housing appropriations bill is quite different from the House appropriations committee-passed bill, but fortunately, like the House bill, proposes to fund the Transit Formula Grants program at the level authorized in IIJA – $14.642 billion. Most notably, however, the Senate does not make changes to the advanced appropriations authorized under the IIJA; the House proposes to redirect $4 billion in advance appropriations. The Senate bill allocates $1.9 billion for the Capital Investment Grant program in addition to the advance appropriation of $1.6 billion. The House had only allocated $53.7 million in addition to the $1.6 billion in advanced appropriations. Under the IIJA, the CIG program has been receiving advanced appropriations of $1.6 billion annually. Regular annual appropriations were added to that amount. Under the House bill, where the annual appropriation was $2.2 billion for the past two years, it would drop to $53.7 million in FY26. When the House proposed amount is added to the advanced appropriations for CIG, the proposed program total for FY26 would be $1.65 billion (compared with $3.8 billion in 2025). Also of note, the Senate allocates $100 million for Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvement (CRISI) Grants, which when combined with advanced appropriations, would total $1.1 billion. The House bill would allocate over $500 million for CRISI for a total of $1.5 billion when advanced appropriations are added. President Trump has pressed Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) to delay or even eliminate the August recess so the body could not only take up appropriations bills, but from Trump's perspective, address the most important duty of voting through more than 135 pending nominations for Presidential appointments. Included in this group of nominations are several DoT nominations, including the FRA Administrator, as well as the top jobs for FTA, FHWA, PHMSA and several Assistant Secretaries. It seems unlikely the Senate will cancel the entire recess, but they may extend the current work cycle to try and chip away at nominations and appropriations bills. Once Congress returns in September after Labor Day, there will only be the month of September to try and resolve the appropriations bills, thus making a shutdown of the government all the more likely.
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