It’s the first day of the work week for the House of Representatives, which has some housekeeping scheduled, working through a series of bills in suspension. “Additional legislative items are possible,” Majority Leader Steny Hoyer advised members, but the most pressing legislative issues—further Russia actions—will likely wait until after Congress hears from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday.
The Senate is taking up nominations, with a final vote to confirm Shalanda Young to be director of the Office of Management and Budget, and a nuisance vote forced by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) “providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention relating to ‘Requirement for Persons To Wear Masks While on Conveyances and at Transportation Hubs.’” Because Rand Paul.
Ukraine
Speaking of whom—and of Ukraine—Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has a sense of the Senate resolution that says the U.S. Senate believes Putin should be investigated for war crimes. It’s nonbinding, it’s just a show of unity behind Ukraine. “What I’m doing today […] is introducing a resolution supporting the complaint filed by the Ukrainian government,” Graham said. “This is a good example of where the International Criminal Court should exercise jurisdiction […] I want the Senate to vote and speak with one voice in support of this complaint.”
Paul won’t do that. “We’ve sent him over some amendments,” Paul said about why he’s forcing a delay on the vote. For a nonbinding resolution saying Putin is a bad guy. Amendments. It’s a wonder the Senate gets anything done with him around. And it does make one wonder again: Just what was in that letter from Trump he hand-delivered to Putin back in 2018?
Most of the rest of Congress is anxiously awaiting the virtual address from Zelenskyy on Wednesday morning. It won’t actually be an official joint session of Congress, possibly because the House chamber where those are held isn’t set up to receive a video address, but instead will be in a Capitol auditorium. The address will also be livestreamed to the public Wednesday at 9:00 AM ET. Zelenskyy asked to be invited to speak to Congress, The Wall Street Journal reports. He’s expected to press Congress for more military aid. It’s a tactic that’s worked for him thus far—pressing Congress to in turn press President Joe Biden to ratchet up sanctions and aid.
COVID-19
Meanwhile, there have been eight Democratic members of Congress who tested positive for COVID-19 in the past four days, which is a reminder for everyone there that the pandemic is not over and that the administration is running out of money to address it. Last week, a large group of Democrats rebelled against the $15 billion in COVID-19 funding that was included in the omnibus funding bill when they discovered at the last minute that the funding wasn’t new money. It was to be clawed back from some 30 state and local governments, many of which had already budgeted for it and would have been left hanging. It was a terrible way to try to provide the funding, and a big misstep for Speaker Nancy Pelosi and team to include it without consulting membership.
However, the reality remains that more funding is critical for the administration to be able to lock in orders for vaccines and treatments to be prepared for a potential autumn surge, or in the event that another round of vaccine boosters will be needed. White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Jeff Zients warned Monday that there would be “severe consequences” if pandemic funding isn’t passed. “Prior to the omnibus, we spent weeks briefing Congress on the urgent and immediate needs that required funding to sustain our response through June. We sent Congress a targeted request for $22.5 billion to meet those urgent medical needs,” Zients said at the America’s Health Insurance Plans national conference.
“We requested Congress to provide these funds as emergency resources without requiring cuts elsewhere to offset them that would jeopardize them moving forward—as lawmakers have done multiple times on a bipartisan basis under the prior administration,” Zients continued. “I want to be very clear: Additional funds are necessary in the very near future to avoid disruptions to ongoing Covid response efforts.” On Tuesday, the White House warned it’s out of money to provide testing, treatment, and vaccinations to the uninsured, and it’s going to have to start rationing allocations of monoclonal antibodies to states.
Pelosi is trying to prioritize “at least part” of the White House funding request this week. “We’ll have to get it done,” Pelosi said Monday. “It would be my hope that we could bring up a bill this week that would do at least part of that.” The difficulty is going to be convincing Senate Republicans.
Supreme Court
In other Senate news, Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson is continuing meeting with senators, and the Judiciary Committee has officially scheduled hearings to begin next week. That comes with a downside for all of us: The Republicans who sit on the committee and who will be preening for the cameras since so many of them harbor presidential ambitions. It really is the worst of the worst Republicans on this committee: Ted Cruz (TX), Josh Hawley (MO), Tom Cotton (AR), Marsha Blackburn (TN) as well as Ben Sasse (NE), all of whom think they can be president.
It’s got even Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) dreading the spectacle. “That usually doesn’t bode well,” he said about all the hopefuls having this chance to be on national television. “I can’t control what other people do. All I can do is try to control myself. That could be a factor, but in the end, I don’t expect it to change the result,” he added, meaning the confirmation of Jackson.
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