|
Both chambers are in session this week.
After Congress passed the $95.3 billion international security aid package, all attention now shifts to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reauthorization. Early Monday morning, House Transportation and Infrastructure (T&I) Committee Chairman Sam Graves (R-MO) and Ranking Member Rick Larsen (D-WA) and Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee Chair Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Ranking Member Ted Cruz (D-TX) announced an agreement to reauthorize the FAA through Fiscal Year (FY) 2028. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) will bring the House-passed Securing Growth and Robust Leadership in American Aviation Act (H.R. 3935) to the floor this Wednesday. Congress has a Friday, May 10 deadline to pass the reauthorization. Specifically, the compromise funds the FAA with $105 billion from FYs 2024 through 2028 and will allow local communities to modernize equipment and improve airports.
This past Thursday, House Appropriations Committee Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) released the Community Project Funding guidance for the House’s FY 2025 earmark process. House Members have just eight days (a deadline of Friday, May 3 at 6pm ET) to file their respective CPF projects to the Appropriations Committee. One major change to the House’s process, according to the Chair’s guidance, is the barring of nonprofits from accessing the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Economic Development Initiative (EDI) program. In the last appropriations cycle, Congress included more than $3 billion in earmark projects for the EDI account, with nearly a quarter of the projects allocated toward nonprofits. The Senate will work on its own process and accept nonprofit projects for this account.
The House will consider seventeen bills under suspension of the rules, including the Fire Weather Development Act of 2024 (H.R. 4866), which creates a program to improve weather forecasting and environmental conditions that contribute to wildfires within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The House will also vote on the Clean Energy Demonstration Transparency Act of 2023 (H.R. 1069), requiring the Energy Department’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations to report semiannually to Congress on the state of projects, and the Weather Act Reauthorization Act of 2023 (H.R. 6093) expanding the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s weather research and forecasting programs would be reauthorized. The Senate will vote this week on Georgia N. Alexakis to be United States District Judge for the Northern District of Illinois.
For the remainder of the week, the House will hold several hearings, including multiple House Appropriations subcommittee FY25 budget oversight hearings for the Department of Transportation, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Agriculture, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the National Guard, Customs and Border Protection, the Indian Health Service, the Department of the Air Force, and the U.S. Space Force. The House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations will hold a hearing on “Examining the Influence of Extreme Environmental Activist Groups in the Department of the Interior.” The Senate will also hold several committee hearings, including several Senate Appropriations subcommittee FY25 budget oversight hearings for the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Education, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and military construction and family housing. The Senate will hold a Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions hearing to “Address the Severe Shortage of Minority Health Care Professionals and the Maternal Health Crisis;” and a Commerce, Science, and Transportation hearing on “The Future of Broadband Affordability.”
| 
