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Overview There are two main areas of focus in Congress right now: budget reconciliation, and the FY 26 Appropriations process. And for the transportation world, there is also Reauthorization of the surface transportation programs; the last authorization – the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act – will expire September 30, 2026. In the Trump Administration, there are still many ongoing activities of note – namely the execution of several Executive Orders, the nomination/appointment of political appointees for all Departments, and the release of the President’s budget proposal for FY 2026, which is not expected until early June sometime. The next several months, leading up to the August recess, will be very busy as both Congress and the Administration attempt to put in place their initiatives. Budget Reconciliation The House of Representatives passed HR 1 last week, the budget reconciliation bill for fiscal 2025 by a very slim margin – 215-214. There were some late changes to the bill that the House Rules Committee made from the original version introduced. There were no changes to the Transportation portion of the bill that impact public transit. Only one amendment was allowed to be offered, and it was the compromise on the state and local tax (“SALT”) deduction as well as several other minor changes. The bill has been scored to increase the federal deficit by $2.3 trillion over the ten-year period 2025-2034. The Clerk of the House will soon officially deliver the bill to the Senate. The Senate Parliamentarian will have to certify that the bill as passed by the House, qualifies as a “privileged” budget reconciliation bill. If the Parliamentarian determines that any provision of the bill is outside the jurisdiction of the Senate committees, then the bill would be outside the parameters of budget reconciliation. The last time Congress enacted a budget reconciliation bill, which was during the Biden Administration (the “Inflation Reduction Act”), the process of working through those questions required more than a month. This bill is not expected to take that long, but if there are any issues raised by the Parliamentarian, the House could be forced to revote the bill with the questionable provision(s) removed. There will also be more detailed discussions with the Parliamentarian – a process known as the “Byrd Bath” – which refers to rules written by the late Senate Majority Leader Robert C. Byrd that prohibits extraneous provisions from being added to reconciliation bills. In the event of questions or disputes, Members and staff from both sides of the aisle would appear before the Parliamentarian to argue their case for including or excluding various provisions. Once the bill is officially transmitted from the House, the Senate Majority Leader, John Thune, can move to a vote to proceed to the bill. If the motion passes (which it is expected to do) the Majority Leader will offer an Amendment in the Nature of a Substitute, which will reflect changes that resulted from the Byrd Bath meetings. The Budget Act provides that debate will conclude after 20 hours, but there will be time allowed for an unlimited amount of amendments. So, members will be allowed to offer amendments which will have roll call votes, until all offered amendments are exhausted. This “vote-a-rama” will provide an opportunity for all members, but mostly for the minority to offer numerous, perhaps hundreds, of amendments for consideration. Most of the amendments offered by the minority will fail, but there could be some that succeed. Eventually the bill will presumably be passed and then it will have to go back to the House, reflecting the changes made by the Senate. If the Senate does not make substantive changes, passage in the House should be doable. However, a number of Republican Senators have already sworn they will not vote for the House bill as passed and with only a three-vote margin for the majority, Republicans will be challenged to achieve passage. (They could have three Republicans that vote no but a tie would be broken by Vice President Vance; if four Senators defect and no Democrats cross over in support, the vote would fail.) And with every change the Senate makes in order to accommodate their members, it means more pressure on House Speaker Johnson to hold his very narrow margin. The Speaker’s margin is not quite as slim as the vote in the House appeared; two Republicans who planned to vote favorably were unable to vote – one because he arrived late to the floor when voting was cut off and the other fell asleep in the back of the House chamber during the all-night session leading up to the vote. So, in a revote, the margin would likely be a bit larger, assuming no new members object to Senate changes. Also of note, the Democrats are down three votes in the House due to the passing of three sitting members, whose seats have not yet been filled. Republican Leadership has indicated they hope to send the finished bill to the President’s desk by the July 4th recess. This seems very aggressive and unlikely. However, it would be very challenging to go beyond the end of July when Congress plans to depart for the August recess because the debt ceiling issue has been tacked on to reconciliation and will require action. The debt ceiling is likely to be reached in August or September according to the Congressional Budget Office and the reconciliation bill passed by the House envisions a four trillion dollar increase in the statutory limit on the public debt. So if reconciliation is not completed by that time, Congress will either have to cut proposed spending in the reconciliation bill to avoid a needed increase in the debt ceiling (as proposed by Senators Rand Paul (KY) and Ron Johnson (WI)), which would be very challenging, or Congress will have to enact a stand alone measure to address the debt ceiling, which is politically challenging for the many Republicans who are concerned about the political implications for raising the ceiling. A stand alone measure puts a lot of focus on that issue.
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