5 Things to Watch in Congress in September
The U.S. Capitol building in Washington on Feb. 6, 2018. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

5 Things to Watch in Congress in September

After a monthlong recess, lawmakers are returning to Washington on Sept. 9 with a busy schedule—and facing a looming presidential election.
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WASHINGTON—Lawmakers are returning to Capitol Hill on Sept. 9 after a monthlong recess to work through an ambitious to-do list on a tight deadline.

Congress faces a Sept. 30 deadline to fund the government by passing new spending bills or agreeing to an extension.

Lawmakers will also have other agenda items to address, including China, defense, and agriculture.

Hanging over all of this is the election, which will be 57 days away once lawmakers return and is likely to affect their actions and rhetoric.

Here are five things to watch for in September.

Spending

Congress’s top priority is to pass a bill by Sept. 30 that funds the government for fiscal year 2025, or it will shut down.

Congress is likely to miss the deadline and will need to resort to passing a “continuing resolution” (CR), which temporarily funds the government at levels set for the previous year without authorizing new spending.

The composition of the CR is what’s dividing Congress at present, leading to fears of a stalemate, and a shutdown. Republicans want to include in the CR a bill known as the SAVE Act, which Democrats oppose.

The SAVE Act would require voters to provide documentary proof of citizenship at the time of registration, which Republicans argue is necessary amid high levels of illegal immigration. Democrats argue the bill would disenfranchise American citizens for minor clerical errors during voter registration.

“Should Americans, and Americans alone, determine the outcome of American elections? Or should we allow foreigners and illegal aliens to decide who sits in the White House,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said in a debate on the bill, adding that Americans “refuse to hand over our country to illegal aliens, cartels, traffickers, and violent criminals and murderers. That’s what’s at stake.”
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Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) speaks at a roundtable on the southern border at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 31, 2024. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

The House of Representatives passed the SAVE Act on July 10, with 216 Republicans and five Democrats voting in favor. Many Senate Democrats, who control the body, have not publicly opposed the SAVE Act, though they are unlikely to accept a CR that includes it.

“It is already illegal for noncitizens to vote in Federal elections—it is a Federal crime punishable by prison and fines," the Biden administration wrote in a statement opposing the bill. “The alleged justification for this bill is based on easily disproven falsehoods.”

Only five of the regular 12 appropriations bills—which allocate money to different parts of the federal government and set conditions for how it is spent—have passed the House. The Senate has advanced 11 of the bills to the floor, though none have been passed yet. Senate versions differ from the House’s, requiring further negotiations to reach compromise versions that can pass Congress.

Moreover, Republican lawmakers are seeking a long CR that would run into the next president’s term. Then, if former President Donald Trump wins the election and the GOP gains control of Congress, they would be able to enact more conservative funding bills. This is likely to be another area of disagreement with Democrats, who may seek a shorter CR that ends after the election.

Republicans and Democrats often disagree about funding priorities, and Congress has routinely been unable to pass all 12 bills in time. Fiscal Year 1997 was the last time Congress completed the budgeting and appropriations process before the Sept. 30 deadline.

China Bills

The House plans to address a series of bills aimed at curbing the existential threat from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as part of Republican leadership’s “China Week” initiative.

More than 30 China-related bills under consideration cover a wide range of topics, including protecting U.S. farmland, trade secrets, critical infrastructure, and advanced technology.

“From economic and academic espionage to intellectual property theft, unfair trade practices, and U.S. land grabs, the threats posed by Communist China must be confronted with strength,” said Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.) of the planned blitz of counter-CCP bills.

“This week’s legislation aims to bolster our national security, protect American economic interests, defend our sovereignty, and secure our future,” he said in an emailed statement to The Epoch Times.

Tiffany’s legislation would counter a proposed pandemic treaty that critics say would give the World Health Organization (WHO) too much control over U.S. domestic affairs.

Tiffany’s bill would require a Senate vote before the United States adopts any proposed measures under the treaty, which he said “will protect our sovereignty and ensure that the safety of our citizens remains in the hands of the U.S., not a corrupt international organization.”

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(Top) Delegates attend the opening day of the 77th World Health Organization World Health Assembly in Geneva on May 27, 2024. (Bottom Left) People walk by a building (Center) that is suspected of being used as a secret police station in Chinatown for the purpose of suppressing dissidents living in the United States on behalf of the CCP, is located in the lower Manhattan borough of New York City on April 18, 2023. (Bottom Right) A paramilitary police officer stands guard on Tiananmen Square after a plenary session of the National People's Congress in the adjacent Great Hall of the People, in Beijing on March 11, 2018. Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images, Spencer Platt/Getty Images, Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images

Several of these bills simply order studies into an issue, with some matters requiring more action—like restricting outbound investment to China and ending the de minimis privilege (which exempts shipments under $800 from tariffs) on Chinese goods—left out entirely.

With the Republicans’ four-seat majority, it’s unclear how these bills will fare in the House.

The House passed several China-focused bills earlier this year, most notably a bill forcing TikTok’s divestiture from its Chinese parent company or face a ban in the United States. That bill became law in April.
Other bills passed by the lower chamber include banning sales of crude oil from America’s strategic petroleum reserves to China, and prohibiting Chinese entities from taking contracts on building U.S. diplomatic posts.
The House passed a bill requiring sanctions on perpetrators of forced organ harvesting in China and supporting practitioners of Falun Gong, a spiritual group persecuted by the communist regime for more than two decades. Detained Falun Gong practitioners are likely the main body of victims of Beijing’s killing of prisoners of conscience for their organs, according to an independent expert panel. A companion bill was since introduced in the Senate.

Defense Funding

Congress is also expected to pass the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the annual Pentagon blueprint.

Partisan riders attached to the wide-ranging bill, including measures addressing abortion and gender transitioning, could fuel debates slowing the bill’s passage. The divided House and Senate will also have to reconcile their different NDAA proposals before they can send a final bill to the president’s desk.

While actual funding is authorized in a separate bill, the NDAA lays out the broad policies, purchases, and initiatives that Congress wants the Pentagon to pursue.

Much of the NDAA deals with vehicles, technology, and weapons procurement that will continue from one year to the next. The NDAA also addresses quality-of-life issues that affect military personnel, such as housing and childcare programs.

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Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) speaks to reporters during a news conference after the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on July 14, 2023. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Still, the NDAA can become a political arena, with lawmakers vying for more partisan policy riders to include or exclude in the scope of the national defense focus.

In June, the Republican-led House passed a version of the NDAA barring the military from funding abortion-related travel and gender-transitioning procedures. Provisions in the House bill also block the Pentagon’s education arm from sharing material that “promotes radical gender ideology.” The House bill faces resistance from the Democrat-led Senate and the White House.

The House and Senate will have to reconcile their overall spending.

The House version of the NDAA plans for $895.2 billion in spending—roughly $50 billion more than President Joe Biden requested for 2025. The Senate’s version of the bill comes in at around $920 billion.

Farm Bill

Congress will work to push through a renewal of the Farm Bill. The current version is expected to be the most expensive ever, an estimated $1.5 trillion over the next decade.

The legislation, passed about every five years, funds land conservation projects and sets national policy on agriculture-related issues. It was up for renewal in September 2023, but has been a significant topic of contention between the left and the right.

At the forefront of the controversy is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly known as the “food stamp” program, which accounted for around 76 percent of the farm bill’s spending over the last four years.

The current House version of the bill would cut $30 billion from the SNAP program over the next 10 years, which critics say undercuts food security among low-income Americans.

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A worker harvests cranberries at Mann Farms in Buzzards Bay, Mass., on Oct. 9, 2022. Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images
Also at stake is a change in the way that farm subsidies are distributed, which critics say will benefit larger operations while hurting smaller farms. This change was opposed by the right-leaning Heritage Foundation and the left-leaning Environmental Working Group.

Nevertheless, the bill has passed committee, receiving the support of four House Democrats in a 33–21 vote.

Meanwhile, Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), chair of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee, has sponsored competing legislation in the upper chamber.

Stabenow said her bill, the Rural Prosperity and Food Security Act, will preserve the “broad, bipartisan coalition of farmers, rural communities, nutrition and hunger advocates, researchers, conservationists, and the climate community.”
Some senators have said it’s likely Congress will need to pass another CR to extend the Farm Bill’s 2018 funding levels as bicameral disputes over its specifics continue.

Veterans Affairs Shortfall

On July 19, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) surprised members of Congress by reporting it was facing a $15 billion budget shortfall.

In response, House Republicans on Sept. 6 unveiled a bill to patch up at least some of the holes in the VA budget.

The bill allocates $2.2 billion for pensions and compensation costs, and nearly $600 million for payment readjustments. Most of the $15 billion deficit, around $12 billion, comes from rising medical expenses. It is still unclear how Congress will deal with that gap.

The money comes with strings attached. If the bill is enacted, VA Secretary Denis McDonough will have 30 days to submit a report to the Appropriations and Veterans Affairs committees in both chambers of Congress, detailing changes to the group’s budgeting and forecasting procedures.

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The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs building is located in Washington on Aug. 21, 2024. Tierney L. Cross/Getty Images

Thirty days after that, he will have to submit a report detailing how the pension and compensation funds are being used. A similar report will have to be filed every 90 days until Sept. 30, 2026.

The bill also mandates an investigation into causes of the shortfall by the VA inspector general.

In a letter to VA Secretary McDonough, Veterans’ Affairs Chairman Mike Bost (R-Ill.) questioned shifts in the VA’s fiscal policies, pointing out mixed signals on its intent to downsize staff: A few months ago, the VA announced its plan to downsize by 10,000 workers, but is now requesting 22,000 more.
Bost blamed the budget deficit on “horrendous, top-to-bottom mismanagement,” and there is a committee hearing scheduled for Sept. 10 to examine how the VA has been managed under the Biden–Harris administration.
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