Good morning, GovTrackers!

You may have seen Elon Musk, Gov. Ron DeSantis, and others talking about our legislator ideology rankings over the last week. For more about that, see our post about it on our website. But enough about us. Here's what Congress is up to this week.

After it became apparent they could not pass their appropriations bills, the House of Representatives recessed a week early and won’t be back until September 9th. The Senate is in though and will join the House in recess later this week, also returning on the 9th. 

The House gave up on passing the appropriations bills before October 1st, the start of the new fiscal year, and will instead spend the few weeks back working with the Senate on a continuing resolution. If they fail to agree, the government will shut down, but that is unlikely to occur. The resolution likely will keep the government funded at current levels until Congress can hammer out a deal, most likely after the election. 

As usual, the Senate calendar gives little hint about their floor plans beyond nominations. According to the Roll Call, a Capitol hill newspaper, the Senate teed up two bills for floor consideration this week: the Kids Online Safety Act and the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act.

Senate committees have 22 meetings scheduled for this week. The most notable is a Senate Appropriations Committee meeting on Thursday where the full committee will mark-up five appropriations bills. Unless I miss my count, the expected passage of those measures would result in the Senate Appropriations Committee having favorably reported all twelve of its appropriations bills.

Other notable hearings address the assassination attempt on former President Trump, an examination of banning noncompete agreements, examining Senate procedures to confirm nominees, the future of electric vehicles, birth behind bars, and an array of nominations and proposed legislation.

I hope you have enjoyed these previews of the upcoming week’s legislative activities. I’m looking forward to continuing them in September.