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Congress: The Week Ahead
With two weeks left before Congress adjourns for their Memorial Day recess period, pressure is increasing to complete some of the big-ticket items that are being considered.
The Senate will attempt to wrap-up its work on the financial regulation reform bill over the next few days, which would then quickly get moved to a conference with the House in hopes of hammering out a final bill very quickly. Lurking in the shadows of the Wall Street bill is uncertainty about what comes next — talk of a tax extenders bill has surfaced in both chambers and while it is clear that Congress will attempt to complete it, it isn’t clear exactly how it will be done or what all the bill will contain. Also on the agenda is the war supplemental bill. In a perfect world for the majority, they would like to have both the extenders bill and supplemental finished before leaving for recess. That won’t be an easy task, but it certainly is a possibility.
Meanwhile, the focus on the Gulf oil spill picks up where it left off last week. Five more hearings will be held this week, primarily in the Senate and beginning this afternoon, to receive testimony from industry as well as officials from the Obama Administration. Secretary Salazar will be the highlight witness, but others will join him in the quest to answer many of the unanswerable questions that lawmakers have constructed so far.
The next two weeks will be jam-packed as Congress makes an effort to complete what is a very ambitious agenda.
Key Committee Schedules for Week of May 17 – 21:
Senate Energy & Natural Resources
