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The House and Senate are back in session after the week-long recess. The chambers return to a three-week work period – leading into the Easter holiday – where budget reconciliation will take center stage as President Donald Trump looks to begin moving his legislative agenda forward. The House will vote on several resolutions to overturn Biden administration regulations, while the Senate will take up additional nominations.
Budget reconciliation holds key pieces of President Trump’s priorities, including tax provisions, defense, border security, and energy policies. House and Senate Republicans, led by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), will need to negotiate and work through differences on their respective budget resolutions if they hope to take up a budget reconciliation package over the next two months. Key differences in the two chambers' budget resolutions include the Senate’s $325 billion for new military and border security spending plus energy policy changes and the House’s $4.5 trillion for tax cuts with $1.5 trillion in spending cuts. On Tuesday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett will meet with Speaker Johnson and Leader Thune on the tax portions of the bill; the chairs of the tax policy committees, Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) and Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.), will also join the dialogue. Republicans will need to work out the permanence of the 2017 Trump tax cuts, which is currently not included in the House’s version of the budget resolution. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects that deficits could sharply increase if the 2017 Trump tax cuts are made permanent. The issue of House cuts to Medicaid at a minimum of $880 billion over a ten-year period will present a significant negotiating hurdle in the Senate.
According to the Bipartisan Policy Center, the U.S. will default on the country’s $36 trillion debt between mid-July and early October 2025 unless Congress takes action. Republican leadership will need to decide how they want to go about increasing the debt limit. If included in the budget reconciliation, they could do it without the help of Democrats. However, if they choose to leave it out of the bill, Republicans would need Democratic support in the Senate in order to avert a first-ever default on the nation’s debt.
The House will consider eight bills under suspension of the rules this week, including the Cost-Share Accountability Act of 2025 (H.R. 359), which requires the Department of Energy (DOE) to report to Congress at least quarterly on the use of its authority to reduce or eliminate cost-sharing requirements to carry out research, development, demonstration, and commercial application projects; the Mathematical and Statistical Modeling Education Act (H.R. 730), which requires the National Science Foundation to provide competitive grants to support high-quality mathematical modeling education, such as statistical modeling, data science, operations research, and computational thinking; and the Innovative Mitigation Partnerships for Asphalt and Concrete Technologies (IMPACT) Act (H.R. 1534), which directs DOE to establish a research and development program to support advanced production of low-emissions cement, concrete, and asphalt. The House will also vote on H.J. Res. 24 and H.J. Res. 75, two Congressional Review Act (CRA) disapproval resolutions which nullify Biden-era energy efficiency regulations related to walk-in coolers/freezers and commercial refrigerators/freezers, respectively; and the Defending Education Transparency and Ending Rogue Regimes Engaging in Nefarious Transactions (DETERRENT) Act (H.R. 1048), which requires higher education institutions that are federally funded and receive gifts from or enter into contracts with foreign entities to be subject to increased disclosure requirements. House votes are cancelled on Wednesday for members to attend the funeral of the late Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.).
The Senate will vote on the nominations of John Phelan to be Secretary of the Navy; Christopher Landau to be Deputy Secretary of State; Michael Kratsios to be Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy; Jay Bhattacharya to be Director of the National Institutes of Health; Martin Makary to be Commissioner of Food and Drugs; Dan Bishop to be Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget; and Aaron Reitz to be an Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Policy.
For the rest of the week, the House and Senate will hold committee hearings. In the House, an Education and the Workforce Subcommittee on Workforce Protections hearing will be held on “The Future of Wage Laws: Assessing the FLSA's Effectiveness, Challenges, and Opportunities;” an Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy hearing will be held on “Keeping the Lights On: Examining the State of Regional Grid Reliability;” a House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Government Operations hearing will be held on “Oversight of the Federal Emergency Management Agency: Operational Challenges and Opportunities for Reform;” and a Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife and Fisheries hearing will be held on several bills, including the “ESA Amendments Act of 2025” (H.R. 1897). The Senate will hold several hearings, including an Environment and Public Works nomination hearing for Brian Nesvik to be Director of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Jessica Kramer to be the EPA’s Assistant Administrator for Water, and Sean Donahue to be the EPA’s General Counsel.
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