The U.S. House of Representatives is out until after the November elections, and the Senate isn’t far behind them.
WSHU’s Ebong Udoma spoke with CT Mirror’s Lisa Hagen to discuss the end of the Congressional session as part of the collaborative podcast Long Story Short. Read Lisa’s coverage here.
WSHU: Hello, Lisa. When lawmakers returned to Washington last week, the House was expected to be in for a week, and the Senate for three weeks. But after a couple of days, the House was shuttered by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA). Why?
LH: Actually, the House was going to be in even longer. They were supposed to be in for kind of the same amount of time as the Senate, and so they had already once cut it short, and so that's when it kind of came down to that week, and then they cut it down to, you know, basically three days last week. So it was even shorter than expected. It's an election season, so lawmakers and leaders always have it on their mind that they want to get their members back in the districts as soon as possible, and they don't want to put them essentially in the line of fire if they have to vote on controversial legislation. And so, one of the bills that had come up was from a Republican, Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky; he was trying to force a vote on impeaching Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and so that had been on the docket. And then they basically punted on that, and then they sent members home.
So, you know, various different reasons why that was the case, but they always keep it in mind. They don't want anything controversial, and they want to get their members home for campaign season.
WSHU: So, what actions did they take? And I know they acted on a bill because the Connecticut House delegation sent press releases saying they didn't vote for it, and it was sponsored by fellow Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) as part of the Russia sanctions bill. Could you tell us a little bit about that and why the entire state delegation in the House voted against it?
LH: Yeah, it was a really interesting dynamic because Connecticut's congressional delegation - you know, the five members in the House and the two senators - they're all Democrats. They usually vote pretty much in uniform a lot of the time. Obviously, sometimes some take different votes, and so there was the Russia sanctions bill that got fully through Congress last week, and so that was something where Congress was able to see some legislative action ahead of the election. And as you said, Senator Richard Blumenthal from Connecticut, a major champion behind this bill, worked on it for years with the now-late Senator Lindsey Graham, and so the Senate got it through. And then one of the final actions of the House last week was voting on that Russia sanctions bill. Ultimately, it got through the House; they sent it to President Trump's desk. But interestingly enough, the five-member delegation in the House from Connecticut all voted against the bill, and so they, you know, put out a pretty lengthy statement. They had thanked Senator Blumenthal for the work. They had reiterated their support for Ukraine, wanting more military aid for them, but they had basically boiled it down to, which was a point of contention for a lot of Democrats, that they didn't want to give President Trump more tariff authority and give him more leeway to be able to make that decision on whether to implement various tariffs on those countries that import a lot of oil and gas from Russia. So that is essentially where that came down to. But a very interesting split in a delegation that doesn't typically split very often.
WSHU: Yeah, and also Connecticut's other U.S. Senator Chris Murphy proposed legislation on ICE. What exactly is he proposing? And it seems as if a lot of what happened in Danbury in the past month with the ICE raids helped propel him to introduce this legislation.
LH: Yeah, it definitely seemed like it was in direct response to what had happened in Danbury. It was a trio of bills, pretty simple, all one-pagers, and they all essentially said the same thing: that it would bar immigration enforcement operations at playgrounds, childcare facilities, and school bus stops, and so he introduced all that. There are similar pieces of legislation that Democrats have introduced, kind of barring similar operations at what we call sensitive locations, and so a lot of the time that's at churches, at hospitals, what have you. The ones that he proposed are definitely places that are frequented by kids and by families, and definitely in more school settings and daycare as well. And so, it's reflective of work that Senator Murphy has already tried to pursue a lot of. He and other Democrats, especially over the past year, were trying to push for various different immigration reforms- sorry, ICE reforms- and so those have all largely been stalled. They were kind of at play when Congress was negotiating government funding. That all got tied up in a bow earlier this year. Republicans were able to act on it alone, and because of that, and because they have a majority, those reforms fell by the wayside, and so Senator Murphy is proposing new reforms or putting this in new legislation. But again, you know, the Senate is about to recess at the end of the month. We have an election, and then they have only several weeks afterward, and it's very difficult for Congress to get big legislation passed after an election and before their work wraps up before the holidays.
WSHU: Okay, so basically, no more action for Congress. We, voters, cannot expect any particular action from Congress on legislation before the election.
LH: The Senate will do a few things. They're trying to put a bow on fully passing, on the Senate side, this college sports bill that I also wrote about that both Senator Murphy and Senator Blumenthal are opposed to. But even if it gets past the Senate, it still has to go through the House, and the House is off through the election. So they're basically in a holding pattern, and so the Senate, the best-case scenario for the Senate is that they can pass nominations, or at least for Senate Republicans, they can pass some of President Trump's nominees because you don't need the House to act on that. Otherwise, again, they're kind of in limbo until after the election.
