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The Senate is in session this week, while the House is in a week-long recess. The Senate faces yet another critical week to advance its version of the budget reconciliation package.
Given the Juneteenth holiday, senators expect to move quickly, releasing the most controversial pieces of the reconciliation package before the shortened work week ends on Wednesday afternoon for the upper chamber. Late on Monday, the Senate Finance Committee released its legislative text of the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” Contrary to the House-passed version, the Senate’s tax and healthcare portion of the bill features a $10,000 State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction cap placeholder (as compared to the $40,000 cap in the House-passed bill), and the Finance Committee print also lowers the Medicaid provider tax to 3.5 percent (varying from 6 percent in the House-passed bill). The bill follows the House’s version by cutting significant funding from Medicaid, and phases out renewable energy-related tax credits authorized by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Cuts to Medicaid are a considerable issue for Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), Josh Hawley (Mo.), Jerry Moran (Kan.), and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), whose votes are critical to passage of the bill in the Senate. Following the release of the text, Senate Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) will brief Senate Republicans on the Committee’s text sometime Monday evening. The Senate Parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, will continue working through each of the provisions of the package, publicly released by ten separate Senate committees over the past two weeks, through a process called the “Byrd Bath.” With the self-imposed deadline of Friday, July 4th to send the bill to President Trump’s desk, lawmakers have only eight legislative days remaining to negotiate the differences between the two bills.
The Senate will vote on the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act (S. 1582), which regulates the roughly $238 billion stablecoin market, creating a clearer framework for banks, companies, and other entities to issue the digital currencies. The Senate will also vote on the nominations of Gary Andres to be Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services for Legislation and Olivia Trusty to be a Member of the Federal Communications Commission for a term of five years from July 1, 2025.
The House returns next week to hold its first vote of the Fiscal Year (FY) 2026 Appropriations cycle. During the week of June 23, the lower chamber plans to vote on the FY26 Military Construction-Veterans Affairs funding bill, which provides a total discretionary allocation of $152.091 billion. The progress of the House Appropriations Committee has proved slow—currently, the Committee has only fully marked up the FY26 Military Construction-VA and Defense spending bills, after postponing markups of the FY26 Agriculture and Homeland Security bills to later in June. Given the insufficient information from the White House on their proposed FY26 budget proposal, lawmakers are unsure if they will be able to pass the FY26 spending bills by the September 30, 2025 deadline. Senate is in session this week, while the House is in a week-long recess. The Senate faces yet another critical week to advance its version of the budget reconciliation package.
Following the assassination of former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband and the assassination attempt on Minnesota state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, members of the U.S. Senate are receiving a security briefing from U.S. Capitol Police and sergeant-at-arms on Tuesday morning.
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